Advertising / Designhttps://maxon.net/en_ENMAXONFri, 24 May 2019 14:07:48 +0000Fri, 24 May 2019 14:07:48 +0000TYPO3 EXT:newsnews-8314Tue, 12 Mar 2019 11:07:31 +0000Do Business With Clients Who Like Your Stylehttps://maxon.net/en/news/case-studies/advertising-design/article/do-business-with-clients-who-like-your-style/Onesal turns to Cinema 4D to create a uniqe brand film In 2014, Argentinean Nahuel Salcedo founded Onesal, a boutique art direction and design studio in Tokyo. He created a brand film for the global campaign, ‘Make Your Impact’, for the world’s largest consulting firm, Deloitte. The film’s aim was to illustrate new technologies and their impact on the world in an artistic style inspired by Japanese design. We talked to Nahuel Salcedo about his work.

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Doing business with clients who understand our style

You use abstract expressions for much of your work.

We enjoy making this kind of films and we want to continue developing this style further.

Is it difficult for clients to understand this style?

It can be difficult. However, we are only trying to do business with clients who understand our style so we do not have to persuade a client who does not like it.

How do you find clients that are open to your design style?

We produce high-quality films and publish them on various websites. We also submit our work to events in the advertising field and clients contact us after seeing our work. Sometimes a client will want to have their film created in the same style as another film we created but often they actually want something completely different. Abstract work can sometimes be difficult to explain to the client.

How do you present your idea to the client?

We use styleframes. Although styleframes are just still images, they enable us to show the client a visual that is close to the finished form. We create them in 3D with simulations made in Cinema 4D and Houdini, and as soon as we get an interesting movement or shape, we render it with Octane Render.

Once the client is satisfied, we start working on an animatic. Basically, we don’t make a storyboard.

In business projects, we sometimes create storyboards or receive them from clients or agents, but we do not publish such projects on our website. Our main task is to produce a visualization of the brand.

If the client is satisfied, we will create an animatic. Basically, we don’t make a storyboard.

In business projects, we may make or receive storyboards from clients or agents, but we do not publish such projects on our web site. Our main task is to produce a visualization of the brand.

What is your main 3D tool?

It is Cinema 4D, since it is very easy to use. Of course, we also use other software, but I have been using Cinema 4D for about 12 years.

When I was making motion graphics in Argentina, there were a lot of artists and designers using Cinema 4D. When I came to Japan eight years ago, the situation was different, but now it has increased a lot. I feel that it is changing, I think it is a good move.

Many artists use one software only in Japan, but how do you use software differently?

Of course, sometimes we create it with only one software. When a lot of particles is needed, we make it in Houdini and bring it into Cinema 4D.

It takes time to learn when trying to use different software, also Houdini cannot be used by anyone. So it would be ideal to use a variety of software while having a good balance. However, I think that it is easier to go with Cinema 4D (laughs).

Where did you learn about Cinema 4D?

The company I worked with was using Cinema 4D and I realized it was very easy to use. It does not take a lot of time to learn. The things I want to create can be easily done with Cinema 4D.

What is your favorite feature in Cinema 4D?

I often use MoGraph and dynamics. I also really enjoy working with soft bodies. Previously it took a lot of time to calculate, but now it got easier and the calculations became faster.

We recently heard your name a lot in the 3D industry.

That's nice, if what you heard about me was good (laughs).

Of course, you have a good reputation. Could you tell us about your workflow?

Sometimes we use X-particles, Houdini, Marvelous designer, and RealFlow. Cloth simulation with Marvelous designer is very fast. We love to use simulation. The results can be difficult to control, but it is often interesting anyway. Sometimes you can even get new ideas from those results.

Personally, I think it is exciting to work this way.

In the project for Deloitte we used simulations a lot. Of course, keyframe animation was also used, but we prioritised simulations.

All of Deloitte's sequences feel very satisfactory, what is your secret?

Trying a lot of things. We find it would be interesting to observe and mimic the look and movement of insects and flowers for example.

The video of Nikolai Bergmann, famous for its flowers, is also very nice. Do you have many clients in Japan?

Many clients are from outside of Japan. We are a Japanese company but many of us are foreigners, so sometimes it's hard to make a name for ourselves here.

Is it easier for foreign clients to relate to your work?

Not really. I think that there will be more requests from Japan in the future and I would like to prepare for that.

We are a small international company and to be based in Japan is also part of our identity. Foreign clients and designers are usually very interested in that. Indeed, we’ve had interesting discussions with foreign advertisers. Being based in Japan offers a lot of benefits.

Is it more difficult doing business with foreign customers?

Not at all, meetings can be arranged via Skype or conference calls. Also, we often collaborate with foreign designers. At the moment we are collaborating with freelancers in Argentina, Italy and the UK.

Why did you found your company in Japan?

I was very interested in Japanese culture so I really wanted to live in Tokyo.

It is very different from Argentina regarding social and human relations. I also love Japanese food.

The Japanese “Wa” and balance of beauty are good. I think that the Japanese "Wa" is expressed in some way in our work. However, our "Wa" may be from a different perspective that reflects more of what foreigners feel.

13 designers are working at Onesal, most of which are foreigners. I think a diverse and international group adds something special and unexpected to our pieces, which makes our work even more interesting in the end.

Do you have anyone whose style you admire or get inspiration from?

We follow individual designers, photographers, small design companies on Instagram, and specially photographic work. Flowers, jewelry, sculptures, architecture – those can become really good references for us. We try not to be inspired too much by other CG works.

We also like WOW and Tangram. Their art direction is really good. We would like to do something like that someday. Many of these studios and artists use Cinema 4D.

Profile

Onesal

A design boutique founded in Tokyo by Nahuel Salcedo, an Argentina native specializing in design and motion graphics.

Nahuel Salcedo

Nahuel got his professional start in Buenos Aires based 2Veinte Studio. He has been engaged in the production of motion graphics for about five years. He then moved to Japan and studied at the Graduate School of Media Design (KMD), Keio University for 2 years. After graduating, he worked at high-end motion graphics studios in London, New York and Los Angeles but decided to stay in Tokyo where he launched a western-style studio.

]]>news-8268Fri, 22 Feb 2019 11:51:00 +0000OnePlus Reaches for the Starshttps://maxon.net/en/news/case-studies/advertising-design/article/oneplus-reaches-for-the-stars/Cinema 4D blurs the lines between reality and sci-fi in OnePlus’ 5T spot. Never settle. That has been the motto of smartphone manufacturer OnePlus since its founding in 2013 with a mission to continuously improve their products according to their customers’ wishes. Just how seriously they take their motto was proven with the premier of the OnePlus 5T, which won rave reviews from the press for its nearly edgeless display, modern design and outstanding performance thanks to its very powerful processor.

Wanting to promote their flagship product with a visually impressive spot, OnePlus turned to Shanghai-based motion designer and director, Somei, whom they had full confidence in having worked with him on a previous project. OnePlus’ direction for Somei was straightforward: include the product slogan, use a door as a key visual and create roller coaster-like camera movement.

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Inspired by the product’s slogan “A new view,” Somei’s team personified the smartphone using a robot. After waking up in a gloomy factory hall, the robot sprints out into the open and leaps from a great height to freedom. OnePlus’ positive response to the idea surprised Somei: “I’ll never forget the moment our client approved our unusual concept with the running robot.”

A few months before starting work, Somei met Taiwanese concept designer Mark Chang at a conference and really wanted to work together with him. Since Somei’s team didn’t have any experience with characters, Chang’s skills were a perfect fit and he took over design and modeling of the robot. Having an extensive network of artists was a real advantage for this project, Somei says. “In China, the number of motion graphics artists is small, and I’m in touch with most team members online.”

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After OnePlus approved the concept, Somei created an animatic defining each shot and camera perspective. Next, motion designer Zaoeyo, who served as art director, began creating the design concepts for the factory hall, the robot’s escape route and the city into which the robot leaps to freedom. To speed up the process, Zaoeyo used pre-built 3D models and arranged them in the scene. Cinema 4D’s MoGraph Cloner and Instance objects were very helpful for quickly and easily filling the scenes with a large number of models.

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Somei hired his friend Peter Zhang to animate the robot. Because Zhang didn’t have a copy of Cinema 4D, the team needed to find a way to transfer his character animation to the model of the robot. After a few tests later, they opted to import Zhang’s model in T-pose into Cinema 4D as an FBX. Here, the artists were able to begin texturing right away while Zhang continued to work on the animations for the individual scenes before exporting them in FBX. Since the setup of the textured model still reflected that of Zhangs, the artists were able to use the Retarget tag to easily transfer his animation to their model.

Somei used the Motion System in Cinema 4D to adapt the timing of the robot animation. Since the animations were baked, a keyframe was set to each individual frame after the animation was imported into Cinema 4D. Somei simplified the animation curve using the Key Reducer and then adjusted the curve again to the snapshot of the original curve, which made it possible for him to more comfortably edit the animation in the F-Curve Editor. Octane was used for the lighting and the final rendering.

It was an ambitious project to complete in just a few weeks and Somei credits Cinema 4D for helping his team deliver on time: “The great stability of Cinema 4D, and its excellent connectivity with other software packages, makes it easy for small teams like ours to meet tight deadlines.”

]]>news-8159Mon, 21 Jan 2019 11:02:34 +0000Game Time for Xbox Game Passhttps://maxon.net/en/news/case-studies/advertising-design/article/game-time-for-xbox-game-pass/Blind explains the 3D adventure they created for Xbox Game Pass’ E3 show.

In 2018, for the fourth year in a row, Microsoft and the Ayzenberg Group tapped Los Angeles-based design and brand strategy studio Blind to create content for their high-profile E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) show. While last year’s project was devoted to the launch of the Xbox One X, this year’s goal was to highlight Microsoft’s monthly subscription service, Xbox Game Pass.

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Blind’s challenge was two-fold: Create something fun and engaging that amps up excitement about Xbox’s subscription service while also announcing current and upcoming games in some kind of creative way. Collaborating closely with the Ayzenberg Group, Blind’s team, led by Creative Director Matthew Encina, used MAXON’s Cinema 4D, After Effects, Octane and Red Shift to create a narrative that builds on Xbox Game Pass’s current drive-thru-themed marketing campaign.

The result brings the drive-thru to life, taking viewers on an animated, 3D adventure past glowing neon signs and game art featuring some of Xbox Game Pass’ current offerings, as well as action-packed dioramas showing off games coming soon to the catalog. I asked Matthew Encina and John Robson, who served as associate creative directors on the project, to explain how they dreamed up and executed the captivating project, which took intense coordination among many different teams.

Matt, can you talk about your process for dreaming up the kinds of things you do at Blind?

Encina: Sure, my process is definitely something I’ve developed over time. I think that anytime you’re designing you are problem solving. And it’s not an art: It’s a science. I mean, there’s artistry in it, of course, but design is an objective process and you have to drill down to solve key problems. Blind’s Executive Creative Director, Chris Do, has taught me that you need to make sure you understand things like: What is the goal? What are the challenges? Who is the audience? Once we understand those things, we know that whatever we make will be useful for the client. Then we move on to define the creative parameters.

From the very first creative kickoff meeting with the client, I try to box in the creative. I find creativity in limitation, so I try to determine a very small box defining what the creative can and cannot be. I don’t like it when anything is possible because then everything is possible, and that is too daunting. Narrowing down allows me to focus 100 percent of my attention on one idea, rather than 1 percent on 100 ideas. (Watch Encina’s video on creating his presentation for MAXON’s 2018 SIGGRAPH booth.)

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Once you decided on a narrative for this, where did you go from there?

Encina: To visualize the aesthetic, I first designed frames in Cinema 4D and Octane so I could get an idea of the overall look and also some of the key moments. After that I worked with a storyboard artist to create the sequence, and then I teamed up with John Robson to do the animatic. I’ve been working with John since 2006, and the good thing about him is that he has more of a film background, and I have more of a design background and we really push each other throughout the process.

If I can dream up a story, John can come up with ways to do it using C4D and third-party plug-ins. He’s always the guy who pushes me to try something new. I can be pretty simple in terms of the tools I use but John is always experimenting on the fringe and pushes us to adopt new tools and techniques. From there, I just scale up and build the team and hardware according to the specific needs of the project.

John, talk about your role in this project and what you tried that was new.

Robson: There’s definitely been an evolution of how Matt and I work together. We push each other, and with this project, the client knows our potential and wanted to push the bar further too. Matt did some really beautiful style frames and we worked together to come up with ways to expand the drive-thru theme into more of a roller coaster ride. That’s how we came up with the idea for the dioramas. Those were fun, beautiful moments that felt like they were trapped in time. I really like the sense of realism and scale, which makes them feel less CG and more tactile.

The new technology we tried for this project was Redshift. We worked in 4K and with Redshift. We were able to optimize our scenes and get through everything really fast. We were able to add so much more detail and volumetric lighting. But another big thing was that we didn’t have pre-rendered elements from the client. We were able to bring in all of the assets from the different game companies and texture and light them to the level we needed on a really tight deadline. Back in the day, it took so many more steps and technical knowledge to create something that was in your head. Some of these shots only took a week from start to finish and they turned out beautifully.

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Describe how you brought your team together and how you worked with others.

Encina: Our process is often the same for a lot of what we do. We try to keep the team as small as possible during development. Once the idea and technique are clear, we build the team based on what we need. For this project, it was me and a few designers at the beginning, and then I brought on John to flesh things out. Then, in the last half of the project, we brought on six Cinema 4D artists and a Maya artist to get us to the finish line.

We like to work that way because it allows us to spend our money very wisely. Our team always stays objective, always tries to do right by our clients and we serve the best creative we can cook up.

Meleah Maynard is a writer and editor in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

]]>news-7995Wed, 21 Nov 2018 13:40:41 +0000Welcome to LUMAhttps://maxon.net/en/news/case-studies/advertising-design/article/welcome-to-luma/A small town’s projection arts festival draws artists and crowds from around the world. Binghamton isn’t known for being a major tourist destination. But since 2015 the small town in upstate New York has increasingly attracted crowds, as well as international attention, for the LUMA Projection Arts Festival.

Founded by a street photographer, a film editor and an event planner who had no idea how popular the festival would become, LUMA is currently the only visual arts festival in the U.S. focused primarily on projection mapping. This year’s fourth-annual event will be held September 7 – 9 in downtown Binghamton where the city’s historic architecture makes the perfect canvas for the show.

Billed as a celebration of immersive storytelling, LUMA attracts crowds almost as large as Binghamton’s population of 45,000. Artists from around the world submit proposals to participate in the three-day event, and those who are chosen craft their tech-infused animations using a combination of elements, including Cinema 4D, Houdini, MotionBuilder, high-powered video projectors, live music, moving lights and more. “This is the biggest festival we’ve had so far, and we’re really pushing the boundaries of using new technology to tell stories in brand new ways,” says Tice Lerner, who co-founded LUMA with his friends, Nick Rubenstein and Joshua Bernard.

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An Unexpected Success

The three of them never had an elaborate plan to start a festival. Instead, the story went more like this: It was a cold early spring night about five years ago and Lerner, a mechanical engineer turned photographer, asked Bernard if he knew anything about projection mapping. He didn’t but being a photographer, designer and videographer, he found the idea intriguing enough to do some research. “I was blown away by the possibilities the technology offered,” Bernard recalls. Working as a local event planner, he’d long been trying to come up with a unique attraction that Binghamton could call its own. Maybe this was it?

Without the money to hire a production company they reached out to friends and colleagues for help. “Luckily, we knew a lot of geeks who could build computers, run software that had to be operated in specific ways and fake their way through using technology they'd never touched before,” Bernard recalls before adding that, luckily, they also brought on their friend Nick, an experienced art director and motion graphics artist. “That’s how LUMA really started out,” he says, “us hanging out in my apartment with some office projectors, mapping my kitchen cabinets.”

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It wasn’t long before they realized that, beyond projection mapping, what they really wanted to explore was the intersection of art and technology. And figuring that there had to be others who felt the same way, they pulled off the first LUMA festival by having an electrician do some rewiring at a friend’s place and set up three projectors in his living room to map the show onto the buildings across the street. “We never say, ‘that can’t be done,’” Bernard says. “There’s always a way.” (See LUMA’s 2018 Kickstarter video here)

But while the whole community had been very supportive, nobody really knew how this whole festival thing was going to turn out. Lerner, Bernard and Rubenstein imagined they’d get a crowd of about 3,000. When nearly 30,000 showed up, they were just as shocked as the local police, who had to quickly block off some of the surrounding streets. “We were so surprised by our success,” Rubenstein recalls. “I think it really showed how hungry people were to see something new and vibrant. By the second year we had grown considerably and nobody could move so, last year we relocated the festival to downtown Binghamton. We also got a lot more sponsorships and community support.”

Bigger than IMAX

Pulling together 3D projection-mapped animated stories that will be shown on sizable buildings is no easy feat. The motivating factor for artists, Rubenstein says, is the chance to work on ideas that have often been percolating for years. “This is art on an enormous scale, much bigger than an IMAX screen, and that’s so exciting for them, and for the crowd. The expressions on people’s faces as their watching are amazing.”

While some artists have shown their work at LUMA in past years, each event also features a few newcomers. For 2018, the main lineup includes Maxin10sity, a world-renowned projection mapping company based in Budapest, Hungary; Light Harvest, a New York City studio known for their award-winning projection mapping work for clients including HBO’s Game of Thrones and Burning Man; Barcelona, Spain’s Onionlab, specializing in projection mapping and VR, they introduced stereoscopic mapping to LUMA in 2017; and Binghamton, New York’s own design studio and production company, Favorite Color.

This will be Onionlab’s second year participating in the festival. Jordi Pont, co-director of 2017’s project, Axioma, will be returning in the same role for this year’s projection-mapped animation, Transfiguration. Both pieces offer very different experiences, Pont says. While Axioma was a red/blue anaglyph animation that explored geometry by taking viewers on a journey through different stages of dimensionality, Transfiguration is an immersive show that will be accompanied by 44 members of the Binghamton Philharmonic Orchestra.

“Through the interplay of lights and music, the United Presbyterian church will turn into a magical place,” he says, explaining that, just for the occasion, Onionlab designed a “complex WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) lighting control system that uses Cinema 4D to modulate different sensations in real-time throughout the show, creating a delicate and hypnotic choreography of lights that will be elegant and solemn at the same time.”

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Collaborating with Artists

Artists are always welcome to submit ideas for future festivals, and all three organizers spend time looking at demo reels and reaching out to people whose work seems like a good fit. “It’s a very collaborative and organic process,” Lerner explains. “I keep a library of the buildings downtown, so I have measurements and photos to send to artists. I also encourage them to go on Google maps and look at the street view to see if there are other buildings they like.” Blueprints are rarely available, so once a building is chosen and an idea has been approved, photogrammetry is used to take more exact measurements and generate point cloud data that’s used to create a 3D mesh of the building’s façade in Cinema 4D.

Light Harvest will also be participating in LUMA for the second time this year. Ryan Uzilevsky, Light Harvest’s founder and creative director, says the studio got involved after Lerner contacted them in 2017 because they liked the “grassroots spirit” of the festival and the fact that the event is driven by artists’ creativity.

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This year’s immersive film, The Truth Shall Set You Free, is a follow-up to their 2017 project, Shoulders of the Past. Both feature motion-captured dance performances, with the first film telling the story of how older generations can inspire the young. “This time, the story is about information overload in modern life,” Uzilevsky explains. “It’s about the struggle we all have when deciding what information is important in our lives, and what is just distracting noise.”

In addition to be one day longer than past LUMA festivals, this year’s event also includes a Theremin concert, opera and beer, an orchestral light show, exhibitions by local artists, a late-night after party and much more. How the festival will grow from here remains to be seen. But the three founders feel committed to making it happen. “I moan and groan and stamp my feet sometimes when I have to go find the money for one more light fixture that somebody needs,” Bernard says. “But I know this year I’ll be standing in the back of the church watching Onionlab’s Transfiguration, and about 10 minutes in something extraordinary will happen, a magical moment, and Tice will turn to me and say, ‘That’s what the extra light was for.’ Our artists are extraordinarily good at detail, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.”

The Truth Shall Set You FreeCreated by Light Harvest StudioDirected by Ryan Uzilevsky

Meleah Maynard is a writer and editor in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

]]>news-7710Wed, 29 Aug 2018 13:38:29 +0000Let Fun Rulehttps://maxon.net/en/news/case-studies/advertising-design/article/let-fun-rule/ How Already Been Chewed Combined Live Action and Animation for a Magical Mammoth Mountain Spot. Portland-based brand strategy firm, Nemo, doesn’t ordinarily use 3D or animation in their work. But after seeing some recent projects by design and motion graphics studio, Already Been Chewed (ABC), they decided to try something different when making a new spot for their longtime client Mammoth Mountain. The result is a fun, action-packed departure from the usual TV spot that mixes live action and animation to illustrate Mammoth Mountain’s motto: Let Fun Rule.

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Relying primarily on Cinema 4D and Octane, ABC spent about four months working on and off to create the 30-second spot, which founder and creative director Barton Damer describes as “a big accomplishment” from a team perspective. “We ended up having about 9 or 10 people working on this, including bringing in three different freelances at various points,” he says. “It’s unusual for us to need such a large team but, this time, it was great to have a lot of people to help with some of the workload.”

61530 Here Damer explains the making of the spot, which is somewhat of a departure from ABC’s recent more photorealistic style, but it’s not new territory for the studio’s seasoned team.

Have you worked with Nemo before?Barton Damer: This was our first project with them, but we’ve been in contact for a couple of years because whenever I’ve gone to Portland for Nike projects, I’ve done capability presentations at Nemo and talked with them about opportunities to work together. I know some people complain about having to do those kinds of presentations, but I like talking to people about what we can off as a studio and we tailor our presentation for the needs of the agency or client we’re talking with. It’s all about how you frame things and, in Nemo’s case, they thought of us because they’d seen what ABC could do.

61539 Describe the direction you got at the start of this project? Damer: They did a great job of storyboarding out the entire spot for us with sketches and things like that. Our job was to turn those sketches into reality, so we created a look that combined live action and animation and got their approval. We made revisions along the way, but the process went really smoothly. They were great to work with and we’ve already worked with them on another spot.

61540 What do other artists ask about most after seeing the spot? Damer: One of the things that makes this spot unique is the seamless integration of low-poly graphics with video footage. People see things like the paper look of the mountains as they animate up behind a skier and they want to know how ABC shot that. We actually didn’t shoot any of the video clips. They were all pulled from a library of clips shot by Mammoth Mountains videographer. We got that seamless look by 3D tracking all of the video clips and then rotoscoping out all of the backgrounds that we wanted to replace.

61538We were unsure of how it was going to look once it all came together, but once we started dropping the 3D elements behind the rotoscoped footage inside Cinema 4D, we could see it was going to work really well. (Watch the behind-the-scenes video here!)

61537People also ask about the timeline a lot, wondering how long it took to do this. It’s a tough one because we had a long, extended timeline so the client could have plenty of time for feedback. In the end I’d say we had about four months, but we didn’t work on it for four months straight. During that time we also created a huge library of individual assets that could be rendered out and used for print. I think we ended up rendering about 50 different high-res assets, including characters, trees, cars, clouds, suns and snowflakes.

61536Talk a little bit about how you worked with the Mammoth Mountain clips. Damer: Nemo ran the clips by us to confirm that we could use them. We did all kinds of background replacements. For example, about 19 seconds into the spot there is a little town scene where you see lots of little shops and apartments. There was signage all over those buildings, so we used Cinema 4D to model replacements that we could integrate easily so we didn’t violate any anyone’s copyright.

61535How did you create the animated characters? Damer: Our lead animator, Bryan Talkish, who is also a great designer, created the look of the characters. Like the rest of the spot, we wanted them to have a low-poly kind of paper feel to them. Based on the first concept, we thought we would be flying a camera down the mountain and be following the characters as they skied.

But the more we worked, we realized that would need to be a far-away shots, so we didn’t end up seeing a lot of the characters, which was too bad. “All of the parts started from either a cube and/or a simple humanoid mesh, extruding, pulling and pushing out sections to form the characters from shirts and jackets to pants and accessories,” Talkish explains. Dirt shaders were used around the phong angles to further the look of the low-poly creases, shading sharp edges a different texture than the flat areas.

61534This looks a lot different from what you’ve been doing. Is it? Damer: To me, doing a piece that involves low-poly work isn’t new for us because we have done it in the past. But this was definitely the most prominent project we’ve used low-poly animation for. Another good example would be a spot we did for Huawei about seven years ago. Our recent work is much more photorealistic. It was refreshing for us as a team to do something more playful, and I notice that we get a lot more comments when we work in this style because I think people can relate to it more than some of the crazy photo realistic stuff we do.

Meleah Maynard is a writer and editor in Minneapolis, Minnesota. ]]>news-7699Thu, 23 Aug 2018 12:01:58 +0000Dark Beautyhttps://maxon.net/en/news/case-studies/advertising-design/article/dark-beauty/ Inspired by what others may find scary, Billelis has built a thriving career all his own. People who see Billelis’ work for the first time sometimes struggle to describe it. A blogger once came close by calling it “gothic chic,” but that sounds trendy when, in truth, his work is much more soulful. “It’s true that I am inspired by dark subjects, so people get confused and think my work looks evil,” the U.K.-based 3D artist and illustrator explains. Really, I just want to create a beautiful look that’s a little bit softer than typical dark art that you see on the internet.”

Though he goes by the alias he’s had since he was a teenage tagger and graffiti artist growing up in Greece, Billelis was born, Billy Bogiatzoglou, and most people call him Billy. Just a few years ago, Billelis was in his fourth year as the lead 3D designer doing all the boards for a motion graphics agency. Days were long but, inspired by Beeple’s Everydays, he tended to be “a bit obsessive about doing personal” work whenever he could. All those hours paid off and, today, he is a sought-after freelancer who specializes in using MAXON’s CINEMA 4D and Photoshop to create fantasy book covers for U.S. publishers, key visuals for TV shows and other types of projects. (Follow him on Instagram for daily updates on what he’s working on.)

Here, Billelis talks about his work, what inspires him and how he continues to build a business doing what he wants to do.

How did fantasy book covers become your specialty?

Billelis: It started about a year ago when I was asked to illustrate the cover for Everless, Sarah Holland’s teen novel. It was a New York Times bestseller, so it got a lot of attention and then a good friend of hers, who is also a top-selling author, had a book coming out so I did that cover too. That turned into a lot more commissions, and now I do covers for Harper Collins, Random House, Penguin, Macmillan and Scholastic. I really enjoy doing them.

What do you like most, and what is the process like?

Billelis: You get a lot of creative freedom. They usually give me a short paragraph about the book and a couple of reference images, like a 2D photo or something. Then, I get to do what I think seems right and they pick from two or three concept mockups that I give them. There’s a lot of trust in the artist once they approve the concept, so I can just take it all the way to the end from there. I use CINEMA 4D about 80 percent of the time and Photoshop and Illustrator the rest.

Did you study illustration in school or are you self-taught?

Billelis: I went to the University of Plymouth in England for coding and art, but I wasn’t very good at it. One day, we had a tutorial on 3D Studio Max and Blender, and I was also getting into Photoshop and Illustrator. Somebody mentioned CINEMA 4D, so I started playing around with it and liked it. I was a bit jealous of friends who were doing interesting work and being featured online and in magazines, so I decided to focus on creating my own style, which was more graphic design at the time.

What do you seek out when you’re looking for inspiration?

Billelis: I really like medieval and renaissance art. I’m interested in crests of armor, shields and religious art with a classic look that I can infuse into a digital medium. I find a lot of inspiring things on Pinterest, like classic paintings, and I also look at anatomy books a lot. There are so many things, really. I follow local tattoo artists and loads of 2D illustrators, and I have a concept book from World of Warcraft as well as darker comics like Spawn and Batman.

Describe a recent project that you really like?

Billelis: With my personal projects, I always like to create a series with an array of illustrations that tell another story. I really like my Blossom project. I wanted to create floral growths on a decaying form and I had fun playing with Octane Scatter. It was a series of personal illustrations inspired by nature, the circle of life and the idea of organic decoration for the deceased on their journey to the afterlife. Flowers, death and life all come together in these 3D artworks inspired by Edvard Munch’s quote, “From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity.”

How important has doing your own personal work been for your career?

Billelis: I’ve always thought personal work was very important, and I really think it’s the reason I have the career I have now. As a freelancer, I have so many commissions, I don’t have to look for work anymore because work comes to me.

Also, I have a rep and a producer now, and they are always trying to get me into new territories. I’m quite lucky because, let’s be honest—skulls are a personal thing. I did an album cover for Bliss n Eso in Australia and that turned out to be one of the biggest projects I’ve worked on because people saw the skull and wanted to know who did it. That really got things started for me, and I eventually ended up doing a magazine cover for a story about Ozzie Osbourne after the art director saw my work on Instagram and got in touch. I make sure to have personal work everywhere, Twitter, Art Station, Behance, Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, Dribble. You never know who’s going to see it, so it’s important to have a presence everywhere.

What advice would you give artists who are just starting out?

Billelis: Everybody learns more about themselves and their art throughout their career, but try to have even a rough idea of what you like and want to do starting out. Even if you haven’t got a style or want to be more of a generalist, do as much personal work as you can. It will improve your skills, but also help you figure out what you want to do. Freelance illustrators need to have their own style, and people will get to know the kind of work you do. It takes time to develop a client base, but you can do that if you really work on it.

Meleah Maynard is a writer and editor in Minneapolis, Minnesota. ]]>news-7692Tue, 21 Aug 2018 14:21:08 +0000Jesus‘ Psychedelic Space Journey: Immortalys https://maxon.net/en/news/case-studies/advertising-design/article/jesus-psychedelic-space-journey-immortalys/ For the trailer for Ivan Torrent’s new studio album, David Ariew sends iridescent sea creatures into space.David Ariew, a San Diego-based 3D generalist, is someone who likes to work under pressure and also has enough imagination to master all kinds of creative challenges. Spanish artist Ivan Torrent emailed David wanting to know if he would create a trailer for his second studio album Immortalys (www.vimeo.com/248504302). Since David had missed all of Ivan’s previous mails he only had three weeks production time left – but he still didn’t hesitate to take the job.

Fortunately, the cooperation between Ariew and Torrent, who had already gathered excellent reference images. including fantastic cover art by the Venezuelan graphic artist Carlow Quevedo, worked well. Ariew primarily used Cinema 4D and Octane as well as a pre-animated whale from Turbosquid to create an aesthetically interesting trailer in which an iridescent whale travels through a magical universe to a futuristic city in the clouds.

We spoke with Ariew about the trailer’s creation and how his long hair together with his growing passion for publishing Octane tutorials have earned him the name Octane Jesus.O. K., let’s start with the Octane Jesus thing. How did that develop?David: I was creating Octane tutorials together with EJ Hassenfratz and they somehow became increasingly popular. More and more people saw me and some started calling me Octane Jesus. Some also said that I looked like Grizzly Adams. I had no idea who this was so I decided to stick with Octane Jesus because I am definitely an Octane evangelist. I like to explain things and be creative at the same time, which goes hand-in-hand for me. Just take a look at this tutorial: http://arievvisuals.com/tutorialsWhat was the next step after you saw Ivan Torrent’s reference images?David: Ivan had thousands of ideas swirling in his head even without any reference images and an entire Dropbox folder full of videos that he had collected. He then went on to explain to me how he wanted the whale to float so it appears gigantic. I was thrilled that he had so many ideas but was also a little intimidated. I thought he would expect the same image quality and thought, ‘OK, what you’re showing me here was done by a thousand artists over the course of an entire year and I’m a lone ranger with three weeks’ time.’ His expectations, however, proved to be really down-to-earth and the tight deadline turned out to be an advantage because we could let our imaginations run wild and reduce them to the essential elements.Instead of having the whale burst out of the water, I suggested to Ivan that we should let its journey begin in space. This was much simpler and still looked really cool. He agreed. Ivan was the perfect client. He had a bunch of ideas but also had realistic expectations – and when I created something he liked he was really enthusiastic! He had worked two years on his album and making the trailer was a very emotional experience for him. We both had the same goal: to make the coolest video possible in three weeks. I wish I could have worked on it for a whole year – he was a great art director!Tell us a little about the scene in which the whale reaches the city in the clouds.David: As soon as it reached the city you can see a type of signal buoy in one of the buildings that emits the same energy as the whale. Ivan wanted to create a connection with the cyan-colored glow on the album cover so I applied it to the whales, the buoy, the windows and the particles in the final settings. The scene with the transition from space to the city in the clouds was one of the biggest challenges and I’d like to mention that my fiancé Chelsea Starling was a great help. She was very interested in the project and her suggestions inspired me to work much more intensely on many shots. I had stitched two camera moves, for example, and she said that, although it looked good, it would be much better if I added the city on the horizon so the viewer can get a taste of what’s to come.Where did you create the cloud scenes?David: For the first half of the trailer I used VDB Mega Pack, which I had borrowed from my buddy Mitch Myer, for all clouds. The only exception was the thin layer of fog in the background, which I had created several months earlier for a tour intro for Katy Perry. In the second half of the trailer, the golden city over the clouds, I used Octane’s Fog Volume objects to create the clouds. To prevent the clouds from looking computer-generated, I created a second Volume object with very patchy clouds that were positioned just outside of the depth of field to break up the contour of the clouds to make them look more realistic.

How did you create the whale’s magical shimmer?David: Because of the tight deadline, I was forced to take several shortcuts – starting with buying a whale at Turbosquid. This ended up working really well. I didn’t use the whale’s texture maps. Ivan wanted to have the glow to come from beneath the whale’s skin so I did a lot of experimenting and finally decided to use Trapcode Form in After Effects to apply an animated texture to the whale. I created the gold flakes and the iridescent look in Octane and I used the Octane Thinfilm shader to create the shimmer. I love the extremely green or cyan-colored highlight on the whale’s contours. It’s a really magical, mermaid-like look and also reflect the colors on Ivan’s album.How did you create the city? David: I used a kit from Kitbash 3D. The kit’s elements all have the same style and I used the Art Deco Kit. The kits are very affordable for what you get – a few hundred dollars will get you a complete city that you can assemble, texture and light. I created my city almost symmetrical, with the bridge and main building as core elements through which I could fly the camera and then pull up. The buildings in the background are asymmetrical and rather scattered rather than placed manually but I really liked the irregularity. This mass of background buildings added a nice level of additional detail and helped make the city look huge.Here you can take a look at David’s KitBash 3D tutorial:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFhmgqykEes

How did you create the closing credits?avid: The closing credits had to be legible, of course. The way I had lighted the scene, however, didn’t make this possible so I had to find a solution to set the typography off the background. I ended up widening the aperture a lot to create a very low depth of field, which would only let the text appear in focus. At the same time, I reduced the background illumination, which brought out the text even more. If you look closely at the top of the scene, you will see that I used several small light sources in front of and between the text elements.

I wanted the closing credits to have the same epic, deep mood as the album’s music. The piece with the deep rumbling and the whale song was so inspiring. It was a lot of fun to animate! Ivan’s music is really unique and it was really cool working with someone who can add fantastic sound design elements and adapt the music to match the imagery. This was a special cooperation and it made the project to something very special as well.

Meleah Maynard is a freelance journalist and author based in Minneapolis, MN ]]>news-7490Thu, 05 Jul 2018 10:11:01 +0000Second Glancehttps://maxon.net/en/news/case-studies/advertising-design/article/second-glance-1/ Art knows no limits: For an exhibition, a series of images is given a new virtual dimension with Cinema 4D that can only be seen through the camera of a smart device! Images, whether photos or paintings, are always snapshots of a particular moment. The moments before and after this snapshot can only be shown using film. The goal of the artist group Achter April (8th of April) is to use new technologies to break the binds of still images. To this end they used an augmented reality layer to bestow a temporal dimension to images from graphic artist Carolin Jörg.

The idea was the brainchild of Michael Fragstein, who is an avid digital illustrator and often sketches is projects using this medium. During one of his presentations he got to know artist Carolin Jörg and soon the idea for this project was born: graphics inked on white paper to which, when viewed through the camera of a tablet device, a virtual animated element is added that continues the image’s dynamic. Together with texts from Marie-Alice Schultz and sounds from Marc Fragstein, Second Glance is an outstanding example of what can be created with the help of augmented reality.

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The animations on the modified Artificial Reality layer were created by Michael using Cinema 4D and X-Particles. He paid particular attention to correctly simulate the images’ dynamics and the flow of ink.

“With Cinema 4D and X-Particles, smoke, fluids and wind can be simulated, which in turn makes it possible to add extra content to the illustrations for the viewer. This makes it easier to interpret the piece or find clues to its origin,” says Michael.

The fact that these images were created by Carolin Jörg especially for this exhibition opens new possibilities for Michael’s animations for each and every image. Michael and Carolin worked very close together: while creating the images, Carolin thought about how the animations would look and Michael developed these inspirations further in the realization of his animations. This also involved bringing the ideas into Cinema 4D where he found ways to realize each individual animation. In 3 months, a total of ten different videos for ten of Carolin’s works were created. Content created in Cinema 4D was converted to an augmented reality layer in Mataio.

Second Glance premiered at the International Trickfilm-Festival (animation festival) in Stuttgart, Germany, where it was shown in the Galerie Ebene0 and enthusiastically received by the public. Second Glance was then exhibited in the Horst-Janssen Museum in Oldenburg, Germany and the Kusthalle in Hamburg. Second Glance can be visited from June 23 to October 7 in the city gallery of Offenburg, Germany.

]]>news-7411Wed, 06 Jun 2018 15:30:02 +0000A Thousand Wordshttps://maxon.net/en/news/case-studies/advertising-design/article/a-thousand-words/Welcome to the world of 3D artist Josef Bsharah where the scene tells the story.&nbsp; As a teenager growing up in Saudi Arabia, 3D artist Josef Bsharah spent most of his time playing video games and watching movies like The Matrix, The Lord of the Rings and Blade. Intrigued by what he saw, he was curious about every part of the creative process and wanted to learn more. His older brother introduced him to MAXON’s Cinema 4D and Adobe’s Photoshop, and a high school teacher helped Bsharah understand the basics of 3D. He took it from there, landing his first job in 2013 as an architectural modeler at a small, local studio.

Architectural visualization was the next thing he threw himself into while also working diligently on his 3D and computer graphics skills. In 2017, Bsharah went freelance and as he takes on new and different projects, he also dedicates a lot of his time to personal work that has not only helped him get better but has also attracted new clients offering the kind of work he really enjoys. “My work is constantly growing and shifting into different mediums but I would say it has evolved into making hyper-realistic environments and short stories that often have surreal and abstract elements,” he explains.

Here, Bsharah discusses his distinctive style, what inspires him and how experimenting with different styles, software and tools is helping him sort out how to shape his career. We’ll also take an up-close look at some of his projects and the stories they tell.

Your website features collections of personal work titled Tungsten, Jade and Voyager Zero. Is this recent work, and how would you characterize it?

J.B.: I’ve done all of those projects in the last two years. Often, I am referencing a mood or style of a render that I’ve created in the past and I’m creating something that fits within it. I think of it as environmental storytelling, but I am also learning. The tools we use today are rapidly changing and evolving, and each kind of tool or software comes with its own challenges. Cinema 4D has helped me a lot with keeping the momentum of ideas going because it’s easy to make changes quickly, especially when you combine it with Octane Render.

Tell us more about environmental storytelling. And what project most reflects that?

J.B.: That would be Tungsten. That was my second attempt to learn more about environmental storytelling. It’s a busy alleyway and there are a lot of small details everywhere that illustrate the overall chaos of the scene. Everything was conceived and modeled in Cinema 4D. I also used Moment of Inspiration 3D, Marvelous Designer and ZBrush for additional detail. It can be really hard to capture the story behind a place or area without much narrative. I try to capture a lot of small things you wouldn’t notice normally, like a dust patch above a pipe, an old spider web or a spot where paper has been mostly ripped off of a wall.

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Describe the other two personal collections on your website, Jade and Voyager Zero.

J.B.: Jade is one of my first attempts at visualizing a small part of the world. It’s kind of a cyberpunk narrative. I’m always fascinated by the incredibly talented Japanese artists who worked on remarkable animated films such as Ghost in the Shell and Akira. The dedication it takes to truly visualize a world like that, on the level of detail that they achieved, is simply mind-blowing.

Jade was also a great learning exercise for me on the technical limits of a full a 3D pipeline with a GPU renderer. I started learning about asset management, organization and levels of detail, along with other things like real-world reference study and matching. Building and texturing everything was a really exciting challenge. Today, I approach massive projects, or any project with many components, differently thanks to Jade.

I spent a year on Voyager Zero. I wanted to discover what I could do with computer graphics, and where I truly wanted to go with my work over time. As I worked, I found myself changing a lot of my workflows and tools, which helped a lot in understanding what kind of work I wanted to spend the rest my career doing. Voyager Zero has reached a lot of people on social media, and I’ve received some really heart-warming letters on some of them.

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Describe a recent client project and how clients are finding you through your personal work.

J.B.: So far, most of my clients have found me through the personal projects I’ve done over the past two years. Often, they are looking for something similar, so it’s a really good idea to have some work out there, even if it’s mostly personal. It still shows your overall style, and there is a good chance someone is going to like what you do and be interested in working with you.

Olena Shmahalo from Quanta magazine reached out to me recently to illustrate some articles on quantum computing. She said she had been following my work on Instagram for a while and liked the versatile style of the 3D visualizations. She wanted to see if I could work with her on illustrating quantum computers in an abstract or surreal way. It was a really interesting project. And I want to say a big thank you to everyone who has supported my work over the years because I’ve learned a lot on my own, but the online Cinema 4D community and interacting with artists on social media has really helped me get over the anxiety of ‘bad work’ and helped me just put my stuff out there.

Meleah Maynard is a freelance writer and editor in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

]]>news-7225Thu, 12 Apr 2018 12:39:33 +0000Journey = Destinationhttps://maxon.net/en/news/case-studies/advertising-design/article/journey-destination/Pause Fest 2018’s opening titles take viewers on a journey around the world.&nbsp; New York City-based art director and designer Toros Kose has always been interested in maps. Captivated by their beauty as a kid, he thinks it was probably all of the intricate details that make up maps that really caught his eye. Though Kose has used maps as imagery in a few projects, he’d never made them a primary visual focus until recently when he was asked to create the opening titles for Pause Fest 2018.

57267Pause Fest founder George Hedon was unaware of Kose’s affinity for maps when he contacted him about the project. He just explained that this year’s theme was Journey = Destination and asked that Kose keep that in mind when designing the titles. Using MAXON’s Cinema 4D and Octane Render, Kose spent nearly seven months working on the titles in between other jobs. Meleah Maynard asked Kose to explain his process for creating the distinctive title sequence, which takes viewers on a journey around the world while subtly introducing Pause Fest’s speakers in just two minutes and 27 seconds. Here is what he said:

How did you come up with the design?T.K.: Other than needing to relate to the theme, the brief was very open. I was really excited to be offered this opportunity and wanted to do something that was good enough for the conference. I had a lot of ideas, and once I decided on what to do, I showed George a PDF presentation that included an explanation of what I wanted to do, reference imagery of different sorts of maps and the work of Japanese artist Noriko Ambe. Her work is just stunning and inspired the look I ended up with for the final piece.

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Also, early on I found a little piece of a T. S. Elliot poem [Little Gidding] that spoke to me and fit the idea of exploration and journey. I looked it up and thought it would work as a wonderful voiceover for the project. It didn’t end up in the final piece because George already had a copywriter on the project who wrote a custom script. We recorded both scripts and he chose the custom one, which did work out really well.

How would you describe your style and how did that fit with this piece?T.K.: I wouldn’t say that I have my own distinctive style, and that has been okay for me. You can see from the work on my website that I like to get into the details of imagery. I like making futuristic user interfaces and holograms. I’ve used maps a few times, particularly when I worked on the game, Destiny: Rise of Iron. In some ways, this project was a culmination of the work that I have done.

What’s your background? How did you get into art directing and design?T.K.: I was born and raised in Stockholm, Sweden, to Turkish and Kurdish parents. I drew a fair amount as a kid and I was interested in cameras and computer games. I think going to a Waldorf school from first grade all the way through high school might have made some difference in what I wanted to do because there is such a focus on arts and crafts. In my last couple of years of high school, I got into video editing software and made my own trailers for video games and upcoming movies. It was those little animation tools in video editing software that introduced me to After Effects and later on I discovered Cinema 4D. I started out studying media technology at Södertörn University, but when I discovered motion graphics I applied to Hyper Island in Stockholm, which is a vocational school focused on digital technology. I got my degree in motion graphics in 2011 and did a four-month internship at Tronic Studio in New York City and then another internship in Hamburg, Germany. I was mostly an animator at that point, but once in a while I did a bit of design work. I learned a lot from tutorials and the C4D community, which really seemed to flourish around 2010.

How did you end up back in New York?T.K.: I missed New York, and I had met my then-girlfriend there and I missed her. So I moved back and started working at a place called Super Fad, which is closed now. I had already been thinking of freelancing, but that forced me to do it sooner. I’m really fortunate because everything has been going so well. My girlfriend and I got married in 2012. And I’ve been freelancing since 2013 and I’ve worked for a lot of great people and studios, like Blur, Prodigal Pictures/Danny Yount, Gmunk Inc., Imaginary Forces, Trollbäck and Perception. I used to work at home, but now I rent a studio with a small team of other artists I met on a project in 2014. I still do most of my work alone with companies in New York or on the East or West coast, but sometimes a few of us collaborate on bigger projects.

Talk about your process for making the titles once you got the green light.T.K.: The first thing I did was start playing around with procedural noise textures in Cinema 4D to generate the line work for the maps. By rendering out an image of the noise and treating it a certain way in After Effects, I was able to get it to look like topographical line work and see how that would translate into animation. George liked the look, and it was a simple way to go because I used the same noise texture to generate both the flat line work and the topology. They are a little offset in width, but they follow each other.

The 3D topology was rendered out of Cinema 4D, and then I used that sequence of noise as a texture in Octane Render to create the elevations. It worked, but it was time consuming because I had to render out large 8K textures. So, if I wanted two seconds of noise I had to render out 48 frames of 8K textures and bring that back into Cinema 4D to use in Octane.

]]>news-7066Wed, 14 Feb 2018 09:39:25 +0000Busy Bees in Overallshttps://maxon.net/en/news/case-studies/advertising-design/article/busy-bees-in-overalls/Television and commercial advert specialists Taiyo Kikaku Co. Ltd and the VR pros at Hololabs Inc. teamed up to create a mixed reality application called HOLOBUILDER™. This application features little workers in overalls created in Cinema 4D. The application was presented at the Contents Tokyo Exhibition where visitors could see these virtual busy bees at work.

Taiyo Kikaku is always looking for new trends and technologies that makes content more interesting and entertaining for the viewer. With HOLOBUILDER™ they entered uncharted territory that gave them the opportunity to test the possibilities of mixed reality.

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The application was developed together with Hololab Inc. and is designed to enhance video or live footage with additional virtual elements to create a mixed reality. This extension of reality is primarily made up of 3D graphics which can, for example, be used to make technical manuals easier to understand – such as using a mobile phone’s camera to navigate around a car’s engine and highlighting items such as the oil dipstick, filler cap, radiator, etc. Taiyo Kikaku’s goal was to explain the basic concept and make its possible applications intuitive and easy to understand for potential customers.

The first thing they had to do was explain what augmented or mixed reality is, what it can look like and what can be done with it. Taiyo Kikaku’s senior director Ryo Ihara thought that this could best be done using humor. The demo app that he created used five simple cardboard panels with which the user could interact in the real and virtual worlds. When the user looks through the VR headset all they have to do is place a card on the table to trigger a swarm of virtual construction workers that pan out from a virtual start card to other cards on the table. On their way they avoid real-world obstacles and finally start building the objects as defined by the cards graphic. As soon as they complete their project the virtual characters jump for joy and the user can pick up the card along with the virtual object that was built and view it from different angles.

Thanks to MoGraph’s ease of use I was able to experiment a lot to perfect the construction process for each object

The individual objects and the animations were created in Cinema 4D, with heavy use of the MoGraph feature. “Thanks to MoGraph’s ease of use I was able to experiment a lot to perfect the construction process for each object,” explains Ryo Ihara. At the time, the team also had to make sure that the animations were kept relatively simple for export to Unity – a restriction that has since been removed in the current version of HOLOBUILDER™. “In my next HOLOBUILDER™ application I will definitely use more assets for even more interactivity. This first simplified demo version is designed to offer a preview of what HOLOBUILDERTM will offer and show the creative possibilities it has to offer for a wide range of projects,” Ryo Ihara continues.

Ryo Ihara’s miniature virtual construction crew is a precursor of the potential that this burgeoning technology has to offer together with Cinema 4D, Unity and HOLOBUILDER™ – and can also be the start of something big for other mixed reality concepts!

]]>news-6910Thu, 18 Jan 2018 07:51:00 +0000Damian Swiderski – Artist and Cinema 4D Userhttps://maxon.net/en/news/case-studies/advertising-design/article/damian-swiderski-artist-and-cinema-4d-user/It can be challenging for artists to find a fitting medium for expressing their art. Damian Swiderski was no exception – until his search led him to Cinema 4D! Damian’s career has taken many different paths. At first, he wanted to study graphic design but soon realized that this was not the right choice. After a friend had introduced him to the profession of theater painter, he saw that this sparked his interest much more than what he had wanted to study.During his vocational training as a theater painter he learned how to use painting tools and media and Damian also realized how limited the field of painting really was: it literally had no depth. All the ideas he had were yearning to be brought to life, and after a brief stint as a furniture designer, Damian discovered 3D. After having tried several 3D applications he realized that they either didn’t have the features he needed or they were very complicated to use.

Only after trying Cinema 4D did Damian discover an application that offered the features he needed and was also easy to learn. His idea was to create real physical objects from virtual sculptures. Attempts to create these sculptures using plaster, clay or even bronze casting proved to be too expensive and time-consuming. Damian decided to produce his designs as 3D printed objects and to finish these manually to give them the final look.

Damian uses the Sculpt function in Cinema 4D because it comes very close to real-world sculpting. He develops his sculptures using basic shapes from the Cinema 4D Content Library. Damian uses the 3D print tools in Cinema 4D to prepare the models for printing and checks for unwanted openings, correct scaling and any polygons that might be flipped.

Since Damian’s virtual sculptures by far exceeded the maximum print size for the 3D printer, he used the printer’s software to subdivide the objects so each part can be printed separately. The Drone sculpture, for example, was printed in separate pieces, which made it possible to create a final object that was much larger than the printer’s printable surface. Damian used two Zotrax printers simultaneously to speed up printing.

The final issue Damian had to deal with was the surface of the printed objects, which clearly showed the layering used by the FDM (Fused Deposition Material) printer during the printing process. He sanded the surface smooth and then painted it. In order to better showcase the printed objects, he created photo-realistic renderings of them in unique environments in Cinema 4D.

About his work in Cinema 4D, Damian says, “Cinema 4D gives me the tools I need to actually bring my ideas to reality without having to be a rocket scientist! All functions and features are very intuitive to use, which means that I can concentrate completely on the project at hand and don’t have to grovel about how I can make the next function work.”

]]>news-6932Tue, 16 Jan 2018 14:07:00 +0000The Ultimate Stage Showhttps://maxon.net/en/news/case-studies/advertising-design/article/the-ultimate-stage-show/Los Angeles-based design and animation house Possible explains the over-the-top stage design for Justin Bieber’s Purpose tour. Justin Bieber’s Purpose tour ran for more than a year with more than 150 shows in six continents over 18 months. His third world tour for his fourth studio album, the show featured captivating environments and visuals created by Los Angeles-based Possible.

For the Purpose tour, Possible, led by director Michael Figge, teamed up with creative director Nick DeMoura and show producer Chris Gratton to create looks and cinematics. Using a combination of Cinema 4D, After Effects, X-Particles, TurbulenceFD and Octane, Figge’s team designed, shot, animated and edited 22 full-song scenics, as well as three intros and interstitials.

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I asked Figge, Possible’s co-founder, and producers Roy Chung and Ryan Chung to talk about Possible’s role in the tour. Here’s what they had to say:

How did you get this project? Michael: We were approached by Justin’s team to handle the visual components of the tour. Possible is known for producing high-end stage visuals for the biggest artists and shows around the world.

How did they explain the look and feel they wanted for the stage environment and visuals?Michael: The show’s creative director, Nick DeMoura, gave us a deck that illustrated the themes and key moments of the show’s arc, and we all worked to key off of the deck, investigating related aesthetics. Working with surfaces on stage differs from traditional broadcast formats (TV, tablets, phones) because the scale of each piece of art needs to have a relationship with the performers. We used Cinema 4D to help sketch out concepts quickly during the design process and provided stage renderings to illustrate how certain moments could play on stage.

What did you look to for inspiration when designing the show?Roy: When we begin researching design looks for our shows, we start with the artist’s existing aesthetic and feel out how much or little we need to adhere to. We always want the show to feel cohesive with the artist’s brand but if they’re willing to take risks it can lead to some really fulfilling creative departures. For this show, we drew inspiration from Justin’s album art, music videos and a robust exchange of design references between Nick, our team and all the major stakeholders.

At one point, Bieber sings “Mark My Words” while hanging over the stage in a glass box. Talk about how you created that unique environment. Michael: With all of the cutting-edge technology we had on stage, we thought it would be an interesting point of entry for us to start with symbols that have endured the test of time, like classic sculpture and hieroglyphics. We modeled, textured and lit the environments with Cinema 4D and Octane Render. Many of the stage environments include dancers. Could you talk about ways you created content that dancers interacted with? Ryan: Once we had references for certain segments of choreography, we built environments for those movements. For example, when dancers floated at various elevations in front of the upstage video wall, we wanted them to have an ethereal quality that was enhanced by combining their motion with high-density X-Particle emissions that were distorted by TurbulenceFD plumes. That gave the particles a movement that dynamically interacted with the edges of the LED wall.

How did you get the many things happening on stage to come together so seamlessly?Michael: We worked closely with the choreography and lighting teams to coordinate moments. With an LED wall that size, it’s easy to drown out other things that are happening on stage. Talking about when and where we needed negative space helped us make sure we were working in concert with everything else that was happening.

Explain a bit about how you used scale and forced perspective to at times make the stage appear much larger than it was.Roy: Scale is always important to us. If you get it wrong, the content would wind up having a Spinal Tap effect [where miscalculations mean the band in the mockumentary winds up with miniature Stonehenge]. We always take care to make sure that scenic content is built to scale.

Dancers sometimes use set pieces, like a half pipe for skateboarders during “What Do You Mean.” Talk about how you extended those into the screen content. Ryan: Seamlessly merging scenic with LED content is a tool we’ve employed before on some of the award shows we’ve worked on. With limited budgets and timelines, scenic pieces sometimes need to be supported by content in order to feel truly transportive. In this particular case, having a half-pipe on stage was just such a cool and fun idea, and we knew we wanted to create an environment that made sense while also helping the half-pipe feel more dimensional by giving it a context. To make sure the scale was correct, we first brought in the fabricator’s model of the half-pipe into Cinema 4D.

What are you working on now?Michael: We’ve got about a half dozen shows launching in the next month, so stay tuned.

]]>news-6904Tue, 19 Dec 2017 10:06:07 +0000A Gaming Experience Like No Otherhttps://maxon.net/en/industries/advertising-design/xbox-one-x-trailer/Blind explains pixel threading and other aspects of the Xbox One X release trailer.news-6858Tue, 12 Dec 2017 11:23:00 +0000Artist Portrait: Humberto Rodrigueshttps://maxon.net/en/news/case-studies/advertising-design/article/artist-portrait-humberto-rodrigues/At his Petit Fabrik studio, this very talented artist uses Cinema 4D to create impressive character animations for adverts and industrial projects. As a partner and head of CGI at Brazil-based interactive studio Petit Fabrik, Humberto Rodrigues is well known for doing exceptional character animation. Recently, he and his team wrapped up work on a new app called 18 Histórias [18 Stories], an interactive book of bible stories for the South American Division of the Seventh-Day Adventists.

Several animated, 3D trailers were created to promote the app, which took nearly two years to complete and features more than 180 images made and rendered in Cinema 4D. Here Rodrigues, who has worked on many international projects, including leading a 3D team for Samsung’s first game, Galaxy 11, explains the making of one of the most ambitious trailers about the story of David and Goliath.

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Describe Petit Fabrik and how you got involved with the studio. H.R.: We are a small company that has five partners, including me. It was started about seven years ago and I joined in 2011. All of us work together on the creative side, but we also have our specialties. I met my partners when I visited the studio to say hello and they asked if I wanted to work on a 3D project. It was a message about the important of organ donation, and one of my professors saw it and told me that she’d lost her nephew that week and the video helped her see the need to donate his organs. People often think the work we do is just for entertainment, but I think that we can do much more. How did you become an animator and director?H.R.: I’ve always liked art. I grew up on a small island in the Amazon called Parintins. There were no formal art schools there, but there was a folklore festival every year and artists who lived there taught each other. I learned a lot from those people, including a few artists from Italy who had classical art training. I got my interface design degree from FUCAPI Technical College in Manaus in 2008 and then went on to do post-grad work in animation at Pontifical Catholic University in Rio. I got into CGI because of my relationship with one of my professors, and I went to France for an intensive, two-week summer program at Gobelins, a great school for animation.

That experience really changed the way I saw my work and CGI. It’s easy to get very technical with computer graphics and worry about how to achieve things. That is important. But I realized how important it is to let ideas mature and understand the feelings that need to be communicated. I saw how movement communicates feeling and how colors and shapes can be feelings—like angles are more aggressive than curves. That’s been really important in my work.

How did Petit Fabrik get the job of making the 18 Histórias app? H.R.: We’ve worked with Adventist Hospital in the past, including an animated film that tells the story of how the hospital started out as a boat with doctors on it before they moved to a small house and grew from there. We actually proposed this project to them, explaining that we would make 3D illustrations that would behave like e-books for an app. They thought it was a great idea. At the time, we didn’t know it would take two years, but there was a lot of development time involved with making hundreds of 3D characters and working with illustrators to paint over everything in 2D to make things look more organic.

The characters in the David and Goliath trailer are very striking. Talk about how you made David. H.R.: This trailer was very special. We really put a lot of time into modeling and texturing the characters. David is the most human character we’ve ever made, and it was very challenging. Our modeler gave me the mesh he made of David in Cinema 4D and I used the sculpting tools to create the details. I gave him the look I wanted by painting dirt layers over his skin and creating a lot of hair on his face, head and chest. Even his pores are showing sometimes.

How did you create the bear and the lion?H.R.: The animal characters were challenging too. We did a lot of testing for every aspect of the bear. Its teeth have a little bit of reddish yellow in them, and you can see they are also translucent. The rig we made was very good because we needed to control the tongue and lips. Bears have very squishy lips.

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I used C4D’s Hair for the lion and I had to get the physics right and really style its hair so it points in different directions and out and away from its eyes. The design is very unique and beautiful, and we used reflections inside the eye to get that red, cat’s-eye effect.

Cinema 4D is not often used for character animation. What was your experience like? H.R.: I have a friend who works at ILM [Industrial Light & Magic) in San Francisco. He says that when people say C4D isn’t usable for characters, he tells them about me. I would say, though, that C4D is fast and easy for character animation and would work for anyone because the tools are all there whether you are working in Cinema or using a pipeline that includes other software. I like how you can watch what’s happening in real time when you’re animating rigs. We optimize our rigs so we can have many characters in the viewport and still have it play smoothly when we are animating. And it was easy to teach to animators who were working with us.

What is Petit Fabrik working on now? H.R.: We’ve got a few different things going, but one is a longer-term project, a show called Lupita. It’s about a little baby girl who is discovering the world of grownups. It’s a challenge because the budget is low and we are doing 13 episodes, each is seven minutes. Our goal is to keep things simple but they still look very good. She learns something about how the world works in each episode, and it will be on the public education channel in Brazil in the spring.

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Meleah Maynard is a writer and editor in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

]]>news-6684Wed, 01 Nov 2017 09:31:49 +0000Studio Website in 3Dhttps://maxon.net/en/news/case-studies/advertising-design/article/studio-website-in-3d/Web design doesn’t always have to be 2D: Hybrid Forest uses Cinema 4D and WebGL to create a picturesque 3D landscape for its own Website!&nbsp; The Stockholm, Sweden-based creative studio Hybrid Forest is a specialist for the production of VR worlds and 360° videos and deals with highly topical subjects that offer the young team endless design possibilities and creative freedom.

To test state-of-the-art methods of displaying 3D graphics in web browsers, the team experimented with WebGL technology. Still in its infancy, WebGL graphics use the graphics card’s power to render 3D graphics in Web browsers. Users don’t need any extra browser plug-ins.Since Hybrid Forest needed an innovative Website that properly reflects their field of specialization, the team used the results of their WebGL experiments and used them to create their official company website.

For the design, the team at Hybrid Forest used Sweden’s idyllic nature and the team’s own fascination for 3D as inspiration: the site shows a 360° view of a picturesque landscape with a lake surrounded by mountains and a typical Swedish wooden house at the edge of a forest. If you look closely enough you will even see an animated bear.

The entire scene and all assets in it were modeled by 3D artist Ashley Reed using Cinema 4D. He made sure to keep the number of polygons low to create a stylized low-poly look and also optimize the scene’s performance for less powerful end user devices. The Polygon Pen tool was an important tool for the quick and easy creation of geometry. The Polygon Reduction tool was also used to reduce the complexity and triangulate the geometry of the mountains, which were created using the Sculpt feature. This step also prevented issues that can arise if non-triangulated assets are used in WebGL. By deleting the Phong tag, Ashley was able to accentuate the low-poly look because the polygons were no longer rounded by a soft surface shading.

Thanks to Cinema 4D’s ease of use, the team was able to concentrate entirely on expressing their creativeness: “Cinema 4D was the perfect tool that allowed us to create a great symbiosis between the modeler and me, the programmer,” explains Daniel Mayor, game engine and web developer at Hybrid Forest.

A particular challenge was integrating the assets created in Cinema 4D in WebGL on the Website. They were first exported as OBJs from Cinema 4D and a special tool was used to save them as JSON files. These files contain text that is readable for Web applications and can be integrated into the Website with the help of the Three.js JavaScript library.

When the scene was finally up and running in the browser with WebGL, the team experienced limitations to the technology, which prevented realistic shadow casting in the browser. This is why they then deactivated the shadows in the scene entirely. Coincidentally, the light in combination with the low-poly optics in the scene generated shading that gave the impression of cast shadows. They added an Easter Egg by making the position of the sun change according to the time set on the user’s computer. Visitors to the site can also affect the position of the sun using an interface and switch between day and night lighting.

The launch of their very innovative Website was a complete success for the team at Hybrid Forest: The project was presented at an inspirational service for designers and was nominated for a design award at AWWWARDS.

Hybrid Forest was impressed by Cinema 4D and an increasing number of staff is using the software. The team also conducts Cinema 4D workshops on a regular basis. 3D artist Ashley Reed is a big fan of Cinema 4D’s ease of use: “Working with Cinema 4D is incredibly fun because it lets me concentrate entirely on the realization of my ideas.”

]]>news-6487Wed, 09 Aug 2017 15:42:57 +0000When a Little Nudge Makes a Big Impacthttps://maxon.net/en/news/case-studies/advertising-design/article/when-a-little-nudge-makes-a-big-impact/Two 3D artists, four weeks’ work and maximum creative freedom: these are the right working conditions for creating a VR simulation of a Rube Goldberg machine in Cinema 4D. Liberty Global is a global media and telecommunications company and one of the world’s largest broadband providers, with more than 40,000 employees. Consumers are more familiar with subsidiaries such as Unitymedia. In 2011, Liberty Global embarked on a search to find out how they can expand their own innovative strength through more employee participation. They decided to create an innovation platform named Spark where employees could share and discuss their ideas with the entire company.

Liberty Global asked the motion design studio Kreukvrij to produce a promotional film for their informational events and Powerpoint presentations to make Spark more appealing to their staff. The only requirement was that the spot be innovative and finished within four weeks.

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Kreukvrij’s Art Director Olaf Gremie and Executive Producer Martijn Gademan from Liberty Global worked together with 3D artist Lars Scholten to develop a creative idea for visualizing the idea behind Spark: Cinema 4D was used to animate a Rube Goldberg machine that uses complicated methods to solve simple tasks to illustrate how a little nudge can make a big impact. What’s special about this project is that it’s a physically correct simulation of the nonsense machine in VR that was created with almost no keyframe animation. To get the most out of VR, the team created the scene differently than for a traditional film. The viewer would have to rotate their angle of view in order to follow the entire chain reaction. This meant that the artists had to make the complete environment visually interesting for the viewer.

The project’s biggest challenge was to make the Dynamics simulation work in a single go. To achieve this very ambitious goal, the 3D artists broke the machine down into individual sections that were saved in separate scene files and added to the master scene using XRefs. They then varied the settings countless times in the Dynamics’ expert settings for each scene until the machine worked as desired in each section. As soon as they had the result they wanted they baked the simulation as an Alembic file to make sure the fruits of their endless labor were saved. This ensured that the animation would still work if the Dynamics cache was accidentally deleted, and also reduced the size of the master scene by more than 10 GB to a slim and trim 71 MB! Also, if the simulation had not been baked, even the smallest change to the scene would have caused Dynamics to behave unpredictably. “Alembic really saved our lives,” says Lars Scholten about the time-consuming work on the Dynamics simulation. The extensive use of XRefs made it possible for the 3D artists to reduce the scene’s complexity and achieve better performance for the simulation in the Viewport. This meant that they were able to work efficiently on the simulation and let the iterations run faster until the desired result was achieved.

To speed up the modeling process, the team used plans of various objects from the Internet for reference and used plant models from Turbosquid. They also observed each model’s distance from the camera to avoid modeling unnecessarily detailed objects.

Cinema 4D’s MoGraph toolset was also indispensible for the project whose Cloners were used to position numerous objects throughout the scene. Cloners were used to create the holes in the wooden calendar and position the colored discs with the help of a Random Effector. The MoGraph Cloners’ render instances were a great help for the CPU-intensive Dynamics simulation of the marbles, as Lars Scholten describes: “We have about 5,000 marbles in the scene that would have overburdened any computer without instancing.”

To speed up the calculation of Dynamics for complex objects such as the wooden airplane, the team used low-poly models that were added to the scene as invisible proxies.

“The project was good fun, because everything works just like a real Rube Goldberg machine and there were many variables that could completely mess up the entire animation,” says Lars Scholten looking back at his work for Liberty Global.

For him, Cinema 4D turned out to be the prefect tool for the project, which was completed in only four weeks: “Cinema 4D is a powerful tool for CG artists who want to accomplish fast and great-looking results, even with a very small team and limited time.”

]]>news-6446Thu, 27 Jul 2017 08:39:29 +0000Audio Creatureshttps://maxon.net/en/news/case-studies/advertising-design/article/audio-creatures/Tim Clapham and Mike Tosetto explain how Luxx helped Director Ash Bolland turn the Sydney Opera House into a natural wonder for Vivid Live 2017. Every summer, the Vivid festival briefly transforms Sydney into an enchanting wonderland of light, color and music. At the center of the event is Lighting the Sails, the Sydney Opera House’s tradition of turning its unique architecture, which resembles sails or shells, into a breathtaking canvas.

This year’s Lighting the Sails production, Audio Creatures, was directed by Sydney’s Ash Bolland with soundscapes by renowned Brazilian sound designer Amon Tobin. The elaborate projection-mapped show, which required 16 projectors, reflects Bolland’s interest in the relationship between nature and humans and offers viewers a glimpse of abstract creatures, otherworldly plants and a futuristic chrome world.

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Tim Clapham, creative director of Luxx, a Sydney-based motion graphics and 3D animation studio, says Luxx was very privileged to be invited by Spinifex Group to create visuals for Audio Creatures. Working with Mike Tosetto, creative director of Sydney motion design studio Never Sit Still, and using Cinema 4D, After Effects, V-Ray and X-Particles as well as custom code, Luxx collaborated with Spinifex to create about 8 minutes of the 15-minute production in seven weeks.

Clapham: It was a huge honor to be asked to do this. It gets millions and millions of views, and is probably the most viewed projection mapping in the world. It was a once- in-a-lifetime opportunity to do this. We had a couple of other great artists working with us and everybody put their all into it. You could tell people really knew it was a privilege. The Spinifex Group and Ash Bolland approached Luxx independently to collaborate on the project. It was a wonderful coincidence and great to know that both the production company and the director had plenty of faith in our abilities. The project was pretty vast and Luxx produced around eight minutes of the 3D content, all rendered at 4K. That’s a lot of material to create in seven weeks, which required many long days and nights to craft.

What kind of direction did you get from Ash Bolland?

Clapham: Ash gave great direction and was a pleasure to work with. He had some very specific ideas but he was open to our interpretations, too. If there was a cool way to execute his concept, he was open to that. Ash also had some wonderful references for how he thought the creatures should look, and it was our job to interpret them. He created style frames for each creature, some montaged in Photoshop using 3D renders, and others were hand-drawn sketches. We worked together to rebuild those fantastic creatures in Cinema 4D.

Tosetto: He wanted the creatures to feel big and heavy, like Godzilla stomping through a city. The opera house is huge, and the creatures needed to convey weight through slow and substantial movement.

What kinds of creatures did you make?

Clapham: We built many of the creatures and components, including a butterfly, a chrysalis, a jellyfish, ice pods, an octopus, parasites, shells and a magnetic core. Each creature presented its own unique challenge. One shot in particular starts with a chrysalis tearing open to reveal a butterfly. Ash wanted to reveal the butterfly’s wings as individual segments from the wing patters. We ran Cloth simulations on each segment, creating flags flapping in the wind as they unfurl to reveal the butterfly wings.

Talk about the challenges of getting everything to fit on the opera house’s sails.

Clapham: The opera house’s sails are an incredible canvas but it is quite an unusual shape, kind of like pieces of an orange. We needed the animation to be constrained within that shape so it didn’t break out and kill the illusion. We had a 3D model of the opera house and the hero projection in position but we needed to make sure all of the elements fit perfectly. We did a lot with deformers in C4D, and also used reshaping tools in After Effects to ensure everything was pixel perfect to the shape.

We explored multiple avenues in Cinema, which gave us the flexibility to experiment with the ideas we had. For example, when we were working on the magnetic core, which is more like geometry and swirling shapes than a creature, we thought it was going to be a simple shot but it turned out to be really challenging. We used a custom Python Effector that allowed us to arrange objects using the Fibonnaci sequence. [A series of numbers wherein the next number is found by adding up the two numbers before it.]

Describe the projection setup for this?

Tosetto: The projections were split into four separate parts and projected all the way across the harbor. Four projectors were used for the two sails on the left, six projectors for the center sail, three projectors for the right sail and three projectors for the two smaller sales for a total of 16.

What did you think when you saw it actually being projected?

Clapham: Ash really had a crazy vision. He walks though life seeing things most of us take for granted but he stops and looks and sees so much beauty in nature and he sees how some creatures are almost like alien beings. Watching this, I thought the creatures felt really accessible, abstract and beautiful. We went out on a limb with this because the whole subject matter is abstract and bizarre but we kept it fun and light-hearted with creatures that aren’t spiky and aggressive, but kind of fluffy and bouncy.

]]>news-6409Fri, 07 Jul 2017 10:42:09 +0000SXSW Gaming Awards 2017https://maxon.net/en/news/case-studies/advertising-design/article/sxsw-gaming-awards-2017/After creating two very abstract clips for SXSW, Jeremy Cox and the team at Imaginary Forces want to forge a new path with their next piece – with Cinema 4D as their secret weapon! South by Southwest (SXSW) is a multi-disciplinary annual conference that includes a film festival, a music festival and various conferences. Awards for interactive media and games are also presented at SXSW. Jeremy Cox’s team at Imaginary Forces has been responsible for creating the opening title sequences for the awards for the third year running.

Jeremy’s search for inspiration for this year’s title sequence started with a retrospective of the history of video games and all the gadgets and devices that are ingrained in the minds of an entire generation. His research also included other sources of inspiration ranging from television shows such as Futurama® to film footage of the Rosetta mission. All of these sources crystallized to form the idea of an archaeological site on an asteroid – including innumerable consoles, joysticks and more buried in cosmic dust.

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“The animations for the previous two SXSW gaming events were challenging but were created using conventional methods. This time we wanted to enter uncharted territory. With Cinema 4D as our tool of choice we knew we were equipped to meet any challenge,” remembers team leader Jeremy Cox. “We used mood boards, production sketches and storyboards in an extensive pre-vis phase to perfectly stage the story. We wanted to use more photo-realism for this piece, which made it a much more ambitious project as a whole. Work began with the shaping of the landscapes. The basic shapes were created using the Sculpt feature, to which complex shaders with procedural noise functions in the Displacement and Bump channels were applied to create the asteroid’s surface look.”

“We used Substance Painter to texture the video game hardware and I was amazed at how quickly we were able to achieve the desired realistic look. The fact that Substance Painter didn’t offer connectivity to Cinema 4D didn’t bother us,” explains Jeremy.

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“We used Mixamo for almost all of the character rigging for the animations. The model of the astronaut was simply exported as an FBX file and uploaded to the Mixamo site. In no time we were able to select from hundreds of animations. The only animation that was missing was for the astronaut sliding down from the top of the joystick, so we created this one ourselves,” remembers Jeremy.

“We used the Physical Renderer for almost all renderings. We didn't use real Ambient Occlusion because this would have required too much render time. Instead, we faked AO with fill lights and several other compositing tricks to achieve the desired look while maintaining acceptable render times. We considered using external render engines but decided to use the Physical Renderer instead. The lion’s share of compositing was done in Nuke, with which we’re very familiar and have adapted to our needs,” says Jeremy.

“We needed 6 months to complete the project, of which two were used for the actual production,” remembers Jeremy. “The clip for this year’s event was much more complex than those in the past but it was fun meeting and mastering this challenge – also because Cinema 4D is a tool that practically never lets us down!”

]]>news-6403Thu, 29 Jun 2017 07:36:53 +0000Leviathan Leverages Cinema 4D to Contribute Extraordinary Video Content to New 150 Media Stream Public Art Initiativehttps://maxon.net/en/news/case-studies/advertising-design/article/leviathan-leverages-cinema-4d-to-contribute-extraordinary-video-content-to-new-150-media-stream-publ/Leviathan,&nbsp;a specialized creative agency working at the nexus of design, digital media, and interaction, was recently tapped to provide a sophisticated content management system and contribute video content to 150 Media Stream. The public art&nbsp;and “living sculpture” was revealed in conjunction with the recent opening of 150 North Riverside, Chicago’s exclusive, new 54-story commercial skyscraper. 40614

The project was a massive creative and technical undertaking that included Leviathan in collaboration with Riverside Investment & Development and architect Goettsch Partners among many others. The display system was designed by McCann Systems in cooperation with Digital Kitchen along with content curated by Riverside's Creative Director Yuge Zhou.
Now considered Chicago's largest video wall, the 150 Media Stream installation is permanently located in the lobby of 150 North Riverside. It features a “…3,000-plus square foot canvas…comprised of 89 individual vertical LED displays of various heights and widths, as well as integration of negative space between each blade…” and video imagery that is constantly changing and revolving. It will serve as a digital sculpture for tenants and visitors and feature commissioned works from both established and new artists from around the world.

Cinema 4D has been in use at Leviathan for the past seven years to create motion graphics on varied projects including the main titles for SundanceTV's original series The Road Road, the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry Numbers in Nature interactive exhibit, the 2013 John Deere Product Launch, and more.

Leviathan leveraged Cinema 4D for the video installation primarily for the concepting and design phases of the project to efficiently create prototypes for a number of procedurally driven real time visual effects. “Cinema 4D was used in the 150 Media Stream production pipeline to help design integrated components of the sculpture in order to deliver an intelligent content library with elements that would refresh on a daily basis,” outlined Jason White, executive creative director at Leviathan. Senior creative director Bradon Webb added, “We chose Cinema 4D as our design tool because it allows us to rapidly explore the visual effects and at the same time know that we can later export the geometry and textures that could be used and converted into real time code.”

“One of the challenges we faced when creating content for 150 Media Stream was the sheer quantity of media needed to keep the installation fresh and interesting. We turned to Cinema 4D to help meet our demanding schedule and visualize numerous concepts quickly and efficiently.” Webb explained.

For the Natural Forces Snow effect, Leviathan created snowflake patterns using a series of cloner geometry objects resulting in unique radial patterns that were exported and instanced onto a particle system in the real time engine built using Derivative’s Touch Designer. “We previsualized the ground layers in Cinema 4D using the MoGraph Shader Effectors’ displaced grid geometry, which gave the scenes enhanced depth by adding rolling hills and accumulated ground snow over time,” adds Bradon Webb, senior creative director at Leviathan.

In the Pixel Fountain concept the MoGraph module in Cinema 4D was used to create pattern animations that were rendered to sequences of black and white movies and used as triggers to drive the particle simulations in real time. “What Cinema 4D excels at is rapidly creating multiple variations of pattern animations,” said Webb. “These patterns were stored as a library and sequenced in real time, which helped streamline our workflow and save time.” For the Picture window effect, Leviathan previzualized the motion of wall tiles opening and closing. Using a fracture object and effectors in Cinema 4D gives viewers the impression of a moving wall while many layers of geometry stacked together provided a complex layered look.

“We also used Cinema 4D to previs the motion of the glass shapes in Color Theory,” said Webb. “Being able to use the simple Cloner and Effector systems in Cinema 4D was a benefit that allowed us to define the motion we wanted and sell the concept to the client before executing the real time code,” said Webb.

]]>news-6298Wed, 10 May 2017 15:16:53 +0000The Bear Who Didn’t Need to Carehttps://maxon.net/en/news/case-studies/advertising-design/article/the-bear-who-didnt-need-to-care/Aixsponza created a price-conscious bear for an advert for the German energy company Thüringer Energie AG. 40151
In times of rising energy prices, an increasing number of consumers is keeping a close eye on how efficient their household devices are and making sure not to waste electricity.
The happy-go-lucky mascot of the Thüringer Energie AG (TEAG) is different: He’s a slacker and doesn't care how much energy he wastes, leaves the refrigerator door open too long and dries his fur with not one but two blow dryers. He gets his electricity really cheap thanks to TEAG’s low rates and doesn’t have to worry about high electric bills anymore.
The bear had already been designed in 2D for a previously run print campaign. The 2D bear had a defined look and a single pose and had to be turned into a 3D character, which was just one of the challenges this project posed. The 3D model had to depict the bear in any pose and from any angle, whereas the 2D illustration only had to depict the character from the front and side – independent of each other.
It was also important to the client that the bear didn’t look threatening or intimidating but friendly and a little awkward with fluffy fur and big – but nowhere near dangerous – teeth. The team at Aixsponza used a front view of the print version of the bear as a reference for the 3D character to make sure that a consistent look was maintained throughout all campaign types. Especially the face, eyes and teeth had to be recreated very precisely in 3D.
A particular challenge was creating the bear’s fur. The creative team had to first find the right value for the number of guides. Too few guides won’t offer the necessary control when the fur is combed and too many will also cause problems because individual guides would always lie in the wrong position, which did not look good.
They started out with relatively few guides and added more manually as needed using the Add Guide Tool. This made it possible to simply vary the number of guides to achieve specific effects with the fur. They fine-tuned the fur using the Frizz, Kink and Clumping features. The Cinema 4D Viewport gave very fast feedback, which helped speed up the process immensely.
The Hair tool is fully integrated in Cinema 4D, which meant that the team at Aixsponza didn’t have to spend time importing or exporting files for the bear’s fur. A Wind object was added to the blow dryer meshes to simulate their air flow. This way their airflow always blew in the right direction when they were moved.
To make the workflow even more efficient, Aixsponza used multiple Hair objects on the bear’s mesh. This made it possible for several artists to work on the bear’s fur at once. This also sped up rendering since the 3D artists could hide all Hair objects for the body, arms and legs when they rendered close-ups of the bear’s head.
The Hair tools played a key role for the project, explains Achim August Tietz, partner and creative director at Aixsponza: “We found the Cinema 4D Hair tools to be very powerful, stable and highly expandable thanks to the tight integration with XPresso.”
The Advanced Biped template was used for the character object to rig and animate the bear. Pose Morphs were used to animate the bear’s facial expressions and the soft sofa pillows under the bear were animated manually. The environment through which the bear moves consists in part of live footage (bath, living room, kitchen) and the rest was modeled in 3D.
Cinema 4D’s comprehensive feature set made it Aixsponza’s software of choice for the TEAG advert. “The fast Viewport feedback and great connectivity of the Hair tools to external render engines were also very effective”, says Achim.
Website Aixsponzahttp://www.aixsponza.com/ ]]>news-6058Mon, 20 Feb 2017 10:15:23 +0000Power Toolshttps://maxon.net/en/news/case-studies/advertising-design/article/power-tools/Panoply employs a combination of Cinema 4D, Arnold and Houdini to successfully evoke the brand values of Mercedes-BenzTo showcase the production of the latest Mercedes-Benz cars, RAID Films and Atelier Markgraph approached Panoply – a design and motion studio based in London. The brief was to produce the first installment in a series of films representing five brand values: safety, perfection, quality, precision and awakening. The film will be shown daily at three major Mercedes-Benz Visitors Centers for the next two years.

The four-person team at Panoply had three months to generate the film, which employs a mixture of photoreal renders of elements of the car combined with a mixture of abstract imagery to express the themes of the brief. The version seen here is the 'Director's Cut' – a shorter version of the piece that includes abstract imagery that didn't make it into the final edit.

One of the team's biggest challenges was handling the massive data sets of the automotive CAD data. The models are incredibly detailed as they are used by machines for manufacturing the cars. But while this detail is very impressive, the models aren't optimized for visualization purposes in 3D animation applications like Cinema 4D.

"I think the most memorable thing from the production of this project was near the beginning when we received the CAD models for the Mercedes-Benz car," says Mark Lindner, director at Panoply. "We opened the raw triangulated meshes and were amazed at the amount of detail we had to work with but also quite worried when we thought about the amount of cleanup that would be required in order to make use of them. Luckily we didn't have to sort every single mesh we were sent. It was a case of composing our shots how we wanted them after which, once we had the shot signed off, we would go in and retopologize only the mesh that was visible."

Cinema 4D's Polygon Pen tool was vital during the retopology phase, acknowledges Lindner. "It allowed us to quickly and painlessly reduce the super-high-density CAD models down to a fraction of their polygon count without losing any detail."

To facilitate this workflow, the team also relied on Cinema 4D's XRefs, enabling them to animate using low-res proxy models and then swap in denser versions at render time. "Due to the sheer number of polygons in the high-resolution versions we didn't retopologize everything from the beginning. We used placeholder meshes in order to do our animations then once we had a locked shot we would then only retopologize the mesh that would be visible in the frame."

To achieve the render look the studio was after, Panoply turned to the physically-based renderer, Arnold. "We've been using Arnold for over two years now," says Lindner. "We first used it with Houdini before it came to Cinema 4D. However, we've mostly been using it with Cinema 4D for the last 18 months. The level of support has been key in keeping us using the render engine. That, coupled with the incredible number of data-heavy scenes you can throw at it without it even flinching, has been vital to our workflow here."

The Mercedes-Benz film opens with a moody industrial setting, which was built and rendered in 3D. "From this environment we created a high-resolution HDRI render using the spherical camera in Arnold," explains Lindner. "This then served as our HDRI for a lot of the other shots through the sequence. Additional lights in each shot were created using area lights with high-resolution soft box textures to give them an uneven look."

There then follows a montage of abstract sequences, aimed at encapsulating the brand values outlined above. The metallic atom array mesh was achieved using dynamics to create a crumpled version of the structure. The team then blended between the point positions on this version and the uncrumpled original using the Pose Morph tag and a Plain Effector. A slight mesh wobble was added using Cinema 4D's Jiggle Deformer. "Using the Pose Morph tag in combination with the Pose Deformer and MoGraph effectors allows for an amazing level of customization of effects," adds Lindner.

An array of realistic-looking laser beams are simply spotlights with high intensity and narrow angle of influence. They were then rendered using Arnold's atmospheric scattering to give the team the visual effect they were after.

For the more abstract simulations, Panoply turned to SideFX Houdini. "Houdini was used quite extensively during this project," states Lindner,"while all of the rendering was done within Cinema 4D. This meant that we'd need to transfer everything between the programs using heavy Alembic files. All of the abstract animations, particles, ball bearing sorting and liquids were done in Houdini."

The first such example is the wind tunnel smoke trails that swirl around an invisible sphere. "This was created using a line of smoke emitters with a velocity field pushing the volume in one direction. With all turbulence and displacements turned off for the smoke it was a simple case of just putting our collision sphere in place and then making it invisible to the camera at render time."

After some sumptuous shots of car bodywork being fitted together there's a brief sequence showing material being dissolved away. "This was created using a high-resolution displacement texture," explains Lindner, "which was then blended to an alternative shader using the mix node in Arnold. The additional particles floating upwards were created in Houdini, then brought back into Cinema 4D as an Alembic point cloud for rendering."

A brief segment of rippling fluids was also created in Houdini using its FLIP Solver and VDB skinning. A sequence of fluid meshes was generated, which were then loaded into Cinema 4D as a VDB sequence for rendering. Houdini was also responsible for the collection of metal spheres that coalesce into a neat Fibonacci spiral.

When the car's Start button is pressed, it ignites a TRON-style data network, representing the electronic brains of the vehicle. These were created in Houdini using geometry: "We created a procedural system into which we could input any mesh and then generate the line animations. This was made to be highly controllable so we avoided using any dynamics – it allowed us to accurately move hundreds of lines exactly where we wanted them in synchronization."

The quality of the end result is a testament to the ease with which the differing strengths of Cinema 4D, Arnold and Houdini could be combined into a powerful toolset. "Cinema 4D's openness in regards to working flawlessly with Arnold and Houdini was invaluable to our workflow," declares Lindner.Steve Jarratt is a long-time CG enthusiast and technology journalist based in the UK.All images courtesy of Panoply.Panoply Website:www.panoply.co.uk ]]>news-5844Wed, 21 Dec 2016 14:26:49 +0000Lightshow in York Minsterhttps://maxon.net/en/news/case-studies/advertising-design/article/lightshow-in-york-minster/Jason Bruges Studio uses Cinema 4D to put England’s largest Medieval church in a new light. 37890
To be able to control the installation’s 48 spotlights, a production pipeline had to be created: the team started with a streamlined pre-viz system that displayed the spotlights’ behavior in the Viewport in Cinema 4D. Next, a real-time control system for the real-world spotlights had to be implemented so they could be controlled directly in the Viewport. For the final presentation of the light show, the data for controlling the spotlights was exported to a proprietary format. This data was then played using a player software that was specially designed for this purpose.
“Controlling lighting fixtures such as the ones described directly from Cinema 4D is something I'd prototyped a couple of times before successfully. It was the leap from prototype to production which would introduce a significant number of challenges,” explains senior visualizer Adam Heslop.
At the beginning of the project it was not clear, which type of spotlight would be used. Each model requires different control data because the various types all have different functions. A Python plugin generator was developed for use in Cinema 4D specifically for the purpose of testing various spotlight models. This plugin used parameters and control methods for the individual spotlights to create models in Cinema 4D with corresponding properties. This made it possible to control all of a given spotlight’s parameters live in Cinema 4D.
Each spotlight had a defined position in space and a specific target. As soon as the target was moved, the corresponding rotation for the spotlight was activated. MoGraph matrices, which could be easily affected by MoGraph Effectors, were used as targets for the spotlights. MoGraph made it possible to not only affect the spotlights’ parameters but also let all spotlights be controlled as a group. This greatly simplified his workflow, as Adam explains: “Being able to modulate groups of objects spatially (in this case the light target Matrix clones) through effector based setups allows for really fast generation of architectural looks and forms.”
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A further proprietary plugin was used to animate the light show, which was used to control the animation on a node basis. The advantage of this was that complex, undulating animations for the spotlights could be activated by the falloff of a single animated MoGraph Effector. This eliminated the need to create keyframes for each spotlight.
“When using C4D for a project like this, the benefits really come from the solid core features,” says Adam, and also praises the software’s flexibility. A stable Timeline for the keyframing workflow and F-Curves makes working with Cinema 4D extremely intuitive.
The designer is convinced that the final result of this highly complex project was well worth the effort: “Hearing the organ with the lights in the space for the first time set as loud as it could go was pretty unforgettable.”

Jason Bruges Studio website:http://www.jasonbruges.com/
Images and minster footage by James Medcraft.]]>news-5763Mon, 21 Nov 2016 13:25:14 +0000Furry Fun with the UBS Bankhttps://maxon.net/en/news/case-studies/advertising-design/article/furry-fun-with-the-ubs-bank/Topsy the fox is Switzerland-based UBS bank’s mascot. After a long and successful 2D existence they decided to bring him into the third dimension with Cinema 4D. 36635“Using Cinema 4D to create a 3D character based on 2D drawings was easy with regard to modeling, in part because the client allowed a certain amount of creative freedom for the design process: the new 3D Topsy had to be recognizable as Topsy but we were allowed to design the character to reflect a contemporary look,” explains Michael Scherrer, project director at Pixcube Animation Studio. Not only was Topsy given a virtual reconditioning – all characters were carefully revised and modernized.

“Based on various feature-length animation movies, the client already had an impression of what could be done with a 3D Topsy & Co. but was nevertheless surprised at the amount of work that went into animating an entire ensemble of figures,” remembers Michael.

“The fact that Topsy and other characters had a fur coat made things the more interesting. Topsy wasn’t the only furry creature in the scenes, which meant that there would be fur-to-fur or fur-to-feather interaction among the characters, which in turn presented quite a number of collision challenges for our team,” said Michael.
36636In addition to all the characters, the surrounding scenery also had to be created, which had to be created in a characteristic “Swiss” look. This meant that mountains, slopes, forests and the characteristic houses and structures also had to be modeled in Cinema 4D. “We made quite liberal use of the MoGraph tools for the creation of the landscapes. Cloner objects, Effectors and render instances were essential elements for this phase. We used the Laubwerk plugin to create most of the vegetation and the Hair feature in Cinema 4D when it came to creating grasslands and pastures.”

“Cinema 4D proved to be a comprehensive program that made it possible for us to meet – and conquer – any challenge we encountered during this project. For example, we were able to save a lot of time by using CMotion to create part of the character animations.”

“We used Cinema 4D’s Standard Renderer in conjunction with the Ambient Occlusion function. We didn’t use the Global Illumination function due to the render times. The renderer delivered the quality we were looking for. We split the rendering processes into three sections: characters, scenery and effects. These were then combined in the compositing phase.”

“We have since created more than 30 spots using this method, which shows that our client is very satisfied with the results – and we are more than satisfied with the results that Cinema 4D and its range of powerful tools delivers,” concludes Michael.]]>news-5712Wed, 09 Nov 2016 12:07:12 +0000Sweet-Tooth Typographyhttps://maxon.net/en/news/case-studies/advertising-design/article/sweet-tooth-typography/Text is not only about writing but can also be used as an expressive medium – which is something that can be easily realized in Cinema 4D. Vijay had always thrived in painting, drawing and design. A deciding factor for his artistic orientation that helped him develop his unique style was the fantasy film ‘At the Earth’s Core’, which had a visual style in the direction of what we today refer to as Steampunk. In it, Vijay saw how function can follow design. Together with his affinity for typography, Vijay was able to develop his own visual style.

In addition to his personal works such as ‘Oh Shit’ or ‘Vijay’, in which design elements are used to create fonts, Vijay’s playful approach to creating creative fonts has also garnered the attention of the advertising community. Vijay has been creating advertising visuals for 15 years for clients such as Lucozade, Miele, Tuborg, Harley Davidson and Sky Bingo.

When Cadbury wanted to create a new billboard campaign that depicted a machine and flowing chocolate as letters, Vijay was given the job. While working at the agency bigdog, he was tasked to create a flagship image for Cadbury World. After a few sketches with pen and paper the design was approved by Cadbury and Vijay got to work on it in Cinema 4D. The look that he designed – in close cooperation with Cadbury – had a touch of Steampunk, with a machine that even Willy Wonka would have liked to have in his factory. A design in true Vijay manner.

Vijay used a variety of tools to create all elements in Cinema 4D. The flowing chocolate letters were created using the Sculpt tools; the remaining letters were created as Text objects and were modified using Cinema 4D’s wide range of modeling tools. After all elements had been modeled, Vijay moved them into position and rendered them. Even though all elements could have easily been rendered in one go, Vijay split the renderings to make color correction much easier. He rendered each part using the Standard Renderer in Cinema 4D with Global Illumination activated. All elements were then combined in Photoshop.

This Cadbury campaign is one of the most impressive examples of a project created in Cinema 4D from start to finish, with the artist having a maximum amount of creative freedom. This project not only reflects Vijay’s fable for Steampunk but also his vision of font design and how it can be realized from A to Z using Cinema 4D.

Vijay at Behance:https://www.behance.net/veej75 ]]>news-5519Thu, 29 Sep 2016 09:22:08 +0000Scandinavian Minimalism in 3Dhttps://maxon.net/en/news/case-studies/advertising-design/article/scandinavian-minimalism-in-3d/Sometimes less is more! This is proven quite impressively by Toke Blicher Møller’s animations that he created using Cinema 4D.Toke’s portfolio is filled with interesting projects but those that really stand out are his own. They emanate the unique laconic melancholy typical of Scandinavian films and books and are portrayed by Toke with maximum realism and a minimum of animation. His piece ‘One Road Two Worlds’ is an impressive example. Created as a title sequence for a documentation about the social and economic inequality in Denmark, its tonality is defined in the very first seconds of the show.

Toke works with textures that are projected onto 3D shapes. These are arranged onto multiple depth layers and animated to create an intense spatial effect that is underscored using subtle effects such as smoke, depth of field and dynamics. The clip ‘The Invisible Man’ is similar in its subtlety and message. The first impression viewers have is that this is a film about super heroes but quickly realize that the character is an invisible homeless person who is not perceived by most people.

“One of the reasons I keep creating such projects is surely their unique tonality, which suits me better than many of the commercial projects I create,” explains Toke. One look at his work such as the film ‘Lines’ or ‘Square’ shows how loyal he remains to his concept with regard to mood and minimalism. The sparseness of his work is due mostly to the fact that he works alone. Even though he shares an office with a production company whose sound designers and producers he can count on, he’s a lone wolf at the computer when it comes to putting everything together.

This is another reason Toke works with Cinema 4D: “Cinema 4D is not only very powerful but is able to handle everything I throw at it. If Cinema 4D reaches its limits I use plugins like XParticle, which can be seamlessly integrated into my workflow. I often use After Effects, which offers excellent integration and file exchange with Cinema 4D.”

Toke Blicher Møller is a seasoned 3D professional and an artist with formidable talent. With his non-commercial projects he is able to use slick computer graphics to successfully convey various aspects of humanity.

Toke Blicher Møller at Vimeo:vimeo.com/tbmstudio ]]>news-5458Mon, 19 Sep 2016 08:48:26 +0000Kaspersky Lab Advertising Imageshttps://maxon.net/en/news/case-studies/advertising-design/article/kaspersky-lab-advertising-images/Kaspersky Labs hired visual effects studio Resight to create illustrations for its IT security products and Cinema 4D was the perfect tool for the job! Security in and of itself is an abstract concept and IT security even more. Not many people can actually picture what IT security is, which is why Andrey Voytisin saw himself confronted with a unique challenge: visualizing the concept of IT security. Kaspersky Lab’s basic idea consisted of using images to symbolize the environment of modern communication, production technology, Cloud and data exchange. As different as these topics may sound, they each represent different aspects of modern technology and also illustrate that everything really is ‘connected with everything else’. The goal of the illustrations was to show customers how these connected situations require comprehensive security measures to protect them.

Stylistically, the illustrations had to resemble science fiction or cyberpunk and be reminiscent of films such as ‘Matrix’ and the color palette had to give a clear impression of computer graphics. Resight worked closely with the client to refine the look of the images. Resight had sent Kaspersky Labs concept illustrations from very early on in the project. As soon as the arrangement in the images was defined, Resight started with modeling and texturing. “We modeled everything in Cinema 4D because we had all the tools we needed in a single application,” explains Andrey and adds, “The only feature we didn’t need for these models was the Sculpt feature!”

Each illustration took about two weeks to complete, which not only included modeling, texturing and rendering but also fine-tuning all details together with the client. “The work on the images often started with pencil sketches on paper, which gave substance to the respective idea. The 3D elements were then created based on this illustration,” continues Andrey.

“Many customers clamor to a particular concept, which for them becomes written in stone. Very often, however, new ideas crystalize during the completion process. Fortunately, Kaspersky Labs understands this process and was willing to accept new ideas if they like them. It was a pleasure working with Kaspersky Labs,” says Andrey laughing.

The final step in the 3D production process was the rendering, which was done using Otoy’s Octane Renderer. The images were rendered in several passes, which were then each loaded into Photoshop and combined. This made it possible to fine-tune details or to adjust or change colors where necessary.

The illustrations that Resight created for Kaspersky Labs show that Cinema 4D is an excellent tool for creating a wide range of illustration styles. Artists with Cinema 4D in their toolset are definitely well-equipped to meet any creative challenge they encounter!

Studio Resight web site:www.resight.ru ]]>news-5222Thu, 11 Aug 2016 12:43:03 +0000The Great Projection Mapping Bake-Offhttps://maxon.net/en/news/case-studies/advertising-design/article/the-great-projection-mapping-bake-off/Learn how a new start-up business used Cinema 4D to make spectacular cake presentations Candy And Grim Cakes got the chance to try this out by entering a charity bake-off hosted at Hoults Yard in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. Although not very high-profile, it gave the start-up a chance to field test its projection-mapped cake sculptures, as well as gauge the impact and audience reaction, which as it turned out was huge, bagging first prize for design and second prize for taste.

Simon explained what was involved in the design process and workflow after they had been given the brief and had an idea for implementing it, "The 3D design is done in Cinema 4D. Not only is Sketch and Toon a very useful tool for creating concepts and making a series of quick modifications but using Cinema 4D I can also create an accurate 3D CAD drawing of the cake and layers, allowing me to calculate exact dimensions, quantities and which cake baking tins to use. It also allows me to engineer the cake structure should, for example, I want to create something like a gravity-defying cake and need to work out forces."

The next stage is a practical one. Simon and Fiona actually bake the cake and decorate it. They are exploring using 3D printing for this part of the process, so that at some point in the future they can print directly from a design in Cinema 4D. An Ultimaker is currently used for bespoke cutters and molds. However, Simon plans to acquire the ChefJet when it is launched in late 2017 because it can accurately print 3D chocolate and sugar structures. At the moment, though, it is not currently classified as a food-safe machine in the UK.

Once the actual cake has been made, it has to be scanned because there is some artistic license and variation in the baked version compared to the designed model. Simon detailed the process used to scan it back into the computer: "Originally we were using the Structure IR 3D scanner for the iPad with the Pro version of Skanect. However, we soon discovered that photo-based scans were more accurate than the IR scans with regard to fine detail. At the moment I am mostly using 123Dcatch but I would much sooner use a MAXON product to make it easier to deal with the data. Failing that we may upgrade to PhotoScan by Agisoft, or wait and see if anything comes from Apple's acquisition of Metaio and Primesense. For the photo capture we have a large photo tent studio and use a motorized turntable to uniformly rotate the cake during capture."

Cinema 4D was then used to create a bespoke UVW map from the 3D scan to take directly into MadMapper. Cinema 4D was also used to distort the 3D scan to compensate for projector lens distortion, as this cannot be done as yet in MadMapper.

The aim of the animation is usually dependent on the client’s brand and brief as well as the story Candy And Grim Cakes is trying to convey. However, typically the projection-mapped cake sculptures are not created as a single start-to-finish performance but are expected to play as a loop. Therefore, the challenge is always to create a flowing and highly engaging experience regardless at which stage the audience starts to watch the content. For the animation, most Cinema 4D tools got a workout as Simon explained: "To be honest, there is very little we do not use in Cinema 4D Studio. Naturally, MoGraph, dynamics and deformers play a large part in the animation process. On occasions I have also used XPresso as well as third-party plugins such as Voxygen, Transform and Signal."

The idea is that the projection mapping follows the 3D contours of the baked cake, which makes it different from any other type of projection mapping onto cake service as these typically use flat surfaces. The best experience for the watching public comes when the animation interacts with the cake, and this is what Candy And Grim Cakes was aiming for with the Newcastle event. Simon and Fiona took their experience of large-scale, projection-mapped events, such as outdoor building projections, or projecting onto stage sets and cars, into the world of sugarcraft to great effect.

In the case of the Newcastle bake-off, Simon was up against the clock trying to produce the 1080p animation, remarking: "Render time was a little intense. It took just 12 hours to create two minutes worth of content, including render time."

Having produced the animation, the next challenge was to successfully project it onto the actual cake. This requires knowing what kind of projector is going to be used and again Cinema 4D is an integral part of the process. Candy And Grim Cakes has used a range of projectors with different lens throw ratios, with different budgets and venue restrictions. Generally they need to be at least 4000 lumens and full HD for it to work effectively. Fine-tuning can be achieved in post-production and in real-time using MadMapper, although MadMapper can currently only import baked OBJ files from Cinema 4D, in addition to stills and clips.

Simon added: "Again Cinema 4D was used to calculate the projector position in relation to the cake, allowing for the projector lens properties. In some instances, Cinema 4D's cameras were used to capture the characteristic of a specific projector lens, making mapping a less painful experience. This was particularly useful with short and ultra short throw lens. On occasions we have even used reflection surface mirrors in conjunction with projectors, creating bespoke rigs to redirect the projection or reduce projection distance."

Having triumphed with the cake in Newcastle, Candy And Grim Cakes is currently working on a Mondoshawan cake (a robot alien from 90’s movie 'The Fifth Element') as well as exploring a self-contained modular system, using Cinema 4D with MadMapper/Millumin and some custom-built hardware for other cake decorators to use. As Simon concluded: "In theory, our unit could also be used in other industries such as retail and exhibition, but that is way into the future."

Duncan Evans is the author of Digital Mayhem: 3D Machines, from Focal Press.

See more at www.candyandgrimcakes.com]]>news-5196Wed, 10 Aug 2016 14:07:00 +0000Mapping a New Face with CONNECTED COLORS https://maxon.net/en/industries/advertising-design/connected-colors/Tokyo-based WOW studios uses Cinema 4D to combine 3D and live performance with stunning results. While Asai took the role of creative director and technical director, WOW worked as the production company for the live action and CG animations. “Face mapping is a new technique of projecting moving images onto a living face, incorporating and using the natural expressions and expressiveness of the face as part of the final result, similar to the art of makeup, which has millenniums of history,” he said.

“Each project in Intel’s promotion was to have a different theme. The theme of ‘Connected Colors’ was inspired by the connected world and Intel's concept of the ‘Internet of Things’, or IoT. The connected world has two sides - a positive side that brings efficiency, optimization, harmony and symbiosis to people’s lives, and another side recognizes the need for operational rules and administration. I wanted the message for this project to question the use of technology, and decided to create an artwork expressing the positive side of connections.

“When we focus technology on life, we see that animals, plants and insects are all based on the same structures – on DNA – and all have different colors. I used the motif of the colors that all forms of life have in nature, including humans, and connected those colors.”

Previous to the Intel project, Asai had worked with projection mapping and virtual reality on his own. His first venture into face mapping was a private project titled ‘OMOTE’, and later he did some face mapping for Japanese TV programming and music videos.

What was different about this project was the level of precision it demanded from their tracking and projection. Lack of precision would affect latency alignment and color reproduction, causing the audience to feel disconnected. Therefore Asai, WOW’s CG artist Shingo Abe and his team made substantial improvements to the latency, alignment and color systems within their production and projection set-ups, giving them much better results compared to Asai’s previous projects.

Using computers with 6th generation Intel Core i7 processors and a light projector, Asai has successfully turned the human face into a new kind of canvas. The processors are tuned with Intel’s overclocking toolkit to push their performance and achieve the level of precision Asai wanted.

Asai and Abe selected their hardware carefully. Asai said, “For tracking we used five OptiTrack motion capture cameras, which capture at 240fps, and Intel PCs. For projection we had a Panasonic projector, looking for the lowest latency, highest resolution and widest dynamic range we could achieve.

Abe said, “For the animations and elements of the animated textures I used Cinema 4D, compositing in After Effects, which is a very fast and natural workflow for motion graphics. I could produce many iterations very quickly, giving me time to get closer to the result and quality I was looking for. MoGraph also has great tools for this kind of project. I use After Effects and Cinema 4D for most of my work, combined with Photoshop and Illustrator.”

First, the artists took a 3D scan of the performer’s face, unwrapped the UVW and captured the texture of the face, and then imported the geometry and the texture into Cinema 4D. After building a 3D model of the face, they created the animations to fit to the UV of this model, and then applied the animation as a texture. This was done for each animation, and these 3D models then became the projection source, or generator.”

At performance time, the position and rotation of the performer’s face were calculated from the tracking data in real time, and we synchronized the position and rotation of the 3D model with it. Thus, an accurate, perspective view of the 3D model’s animated textures was projected onto the real face.

Abe said, “Cinema 4D’s speed was important because this was the first face mapping project we have done at WoW. The whole project had to be completed in six months, but because it took us some time to get our ideas and approaches into shape we only had one month to spend on production work. The speed of Cinema 4D really helped us.

“One of the first and most important aspects of face mapping we discovered was how sensitive viewers are to even slight changes to the face that are incongruous or out of harmony with the performance. Compared to small alterations made to landscapes or product shots, for instance, audience reactions to faces are much stronger. So we had to do a lot of testing and work rapidly through many trials.”

Cinema 4D’s MoGraph tools were especially useful in three of the animations. The first is the scanning sequence at the start of the video. Later on we see a transition from the model’s skin to a black-and-yellow lizard’s skin, and a few seconds later a black-and-red frog’s skin forms and slides off the face. 12sec, 50sec, 1.03sec

MoGraph’s Inheritance Effector was used in the scanning sequence to transition a composited wireframe as a 3D effect as it moves over the face, and then spreads out from the nose. When this was rendered with the Cel Renderer as a post effect, it created a complex pattern.

For the lizard’s skin, the Shader Effector forced a gradual change across the texture of the face’s surface. The Random Effector was used to produce the randomized, fractured black-and-red pieces of the frog skin, while the slide-off effect was created using Dynamics, which have parameters that can be set through the Effectors.

Once all of these animations, looks and effects were completed as WOW wanted them to be, precise projection data was generated using original software the team developed for this purpose. Interestingly, although this production gives you an impression of interactivity and spontaneity, the actual projected movie is fixed. Only the projection, driven by the motion capture, was interactive. This made it possible to storyboard the piece in a deliberate way.

At times, the model appears to blink and open up her eyes to reveal an animal’s eyes, or to suddenly smile. In those cases, Abe explained, she did not actually blink in real-time. Viewers are watching a projected animation - only. “We have done a lot of research and created numerous simulations for eye expressions, adjusting them over and over,” he said. “People can immediately sense even the smallest incongruity around the eyes. In daily life, they watch other people’s eyes and, from there, read slight changes in feelings. To test those projections, we used a mockup of the scanned face model, Cinema 4D and other software until we could finally create very natural blinks and smiles.”

Asai commented, “Modifying details of the face is very sensitive work. It is fairly easy to express humor or fear, or achieve grotesque results. Conversely, beautiful expressions on faces are very difficult.”
Watch Video

Nobumichiasai website: http://www.nobumichiasai.com/ ]]>news-5201Wed, 10 Aug 2016 09:34:13 +0000Discovering Your Future Selfhttps://maxon.net/en/news/case-studies/advertising-design/article/discovering-your-future-self/The annual Pause festival is the tech show for creative spirits. Visitors are invited per video clip, and this year’s invitation was created by seasoned Cinema 4D artist Brett Morris.The team with which Brett wanted to tackle the project included Patrick Goski, a digital sculptor, and Stephen Panicara, designer and animator. Brett and his team gathered visual elements for inspiration, which consisted of three main items: the Marble Canyon, Arizona, cliffs known as ‘The Wave’, a bust and a fluids effect. “During the design phase, a lot of what we had in our mind’s eye was doable but also presented major technical challenges,” remembers Brett. “But we knew from the start that our visual concept had great potential. It quickly became clear that the ‘wave’ formation would have to be constructed in 3D. We wanted to track a shot through the cliffs, which we wanted to depict with a highly stylized structure. We built the assets in Cinema 4D and shaped them using the Sculpt feature.”

The next hurdle the team had to clear was somewhat higher: a wax bust on whose back melting wax had to flow horizontally to form stalagmites. “Here we used a special setup for X-Particles. The first attempt resulted in a monotone look that was much too smooth. Fortunately, X-Particles is a fully integrated plugin and any Cinema 4D tag can be used with it. Simply adding a Jiggle tag gave us the irregular look we wanted for the particles as well as the natural look we had imagined!”

In the next sequence, the bust – which is used as a visual element throughout the motion response clip – had to partially melt and disintegrate into two halves that then rotated to face each other. “We already knew exactly how the melted bust should look but we had no idea how we wanted to create this look,” said Brett. “Fortunately, Patrick – who is also part of the MAXON family – decided to take on the job. He sculpted the melting bust. Since the Sculpt tag saves all sculpting subdivisions, we also had a simplified low-poly version of the model that we could animate. Without this model, the polygon count would have been immense and we would have had to do without the animation,” explains Brett. “Cinema 4D is like a dependable colleague who has your back when things get dicey!”

Looking back, Brett sees this project as something special: “This was a very ambitious project and at the beginning we thought we wouldn’t have enough time to complete the project as imagined. But somehow we were able to realize all the ideas we initially had for the project. In fact, it never really felt like “work” but rather like we were kids playing with our favorite toys – only that our favorite toy now is Cinema 4D!”

Brett Morris website:www.brett-morris.com/]]>news-4837Tue, 05 Jan 2016 14:52:00 +0000Getting a Slice of the Actionhttps://maxon.net/en/news/case-studies/advertising-design/article/getting-a-slice-of-the-action/Creating a visualization for a product that hasn’t bven been finished requires a flexible and powerful toolset. Here’s how Cinema 4D made it happenBy Duncan Evans

Fundraising websites like Kickstarter are a great way of getting projects off the ground that would otherwise never see the light of day. One such idea was Slice, a media player powered by a Raspberry Pi core. The problem was getting people to back a hardware device that hadn’t been completed, yet, especially when the look of it was going to be a key selling point. That’s when the team behind Slice, Five Ninjas, turned to Toby Pitman to create a 30-second animation in HD resolution that showcased the features as well as the physical form it would take.

For Toby, that meant building an animated visualization of a media player that, at the time, only existed on paper. The product had been designed but was in the process of being prototyped. Toby had to show prospective backers on Kickstarter how the unit was put together and explain the basic feature set in a compelling way to get them to fund it.
Toby explained the main objectives: "Getting everything to scale was probably the most important goal. There were many separate pieces like the hard drive, ports and Pi Compute Module that were all modeled individually and had to fit together on the main circuit board. As the product was did actually exist, all the pieces were modeled to their correct real-world measurements so they all fit together properly."

In practice, that means a combination of methods to get the measurements for the various parts. Tobyx received a CAD file of the casing that underwent re-topology so the dimensions of the real-life version were brought in as a guide. To back this up, he was also sent a real circuit board, which was bare at the time, so it could be accurately measured. The same process was repeated for the Pi Compute Module.

Toby explained how he got the rest of the measurements: "Pretty much everything else was extracted from manufacturer’s data sheets. I was sent part numbers they intended to use and simply looked them up and got the measurements. Many parts have a technical blueprint that you can use as a guide for modeling."

Then it was over to the Cinema 4D modeling tools themselves. Toby photographed the circuit board and traced over it in Adobe Illustrator to create the layout. The result was imported into Cinema 4D as splines and then extruded. He revealed that the hardest part of the process was, "probably the hard drive, which, ironically enough, you don't really see. Most of the parts are really simple in nature but some of them, like the ports, look complex as they have a lot of extra detail bolted on. It's mostly so small that you can't see just how basic it is. The most time-consuming part was manually positioning the resistors and chips on the main circuit board. I'm glad I wasn't the guy who actually had to weld them for real on the prototype."
The real challenge was deciding which tool was going to give the best result in the shortest time and this is where a good working knowledge of hard surface modeling paid dividends. Toby explained, "Sometimes you can just use basic primitives for parts, like the chips and resistors, and sometimes you just have to get stuck in with the Knife tool and build up the detail. Learning about edge flow and topology are probably the best tools in your arsenal. Just a simple thing like modeling with symmetry will save you a bunch of time."

Once the circuit board was UV unwrapped, Toby then built the Color, Bump and Specular texture maps in Photoshop by lifting the details off the hi-res photos he’d taken. The circuit board alone was made up of nearly 300 separate components.

The other feature that really saved time was MoGraph, which was mainly used for the duplication of parts like the LEDs. Toby built just one then used Object mode to clone it onto some simple polygon strips. The lighting effects themselves, a key part of the selling pitch for the project, were done using Adobe After Effects. The polygons at the center of the LED were split off and assigned to an Object Buffer. This Buffer pass was then masked using a simple animated matte layer to reveal it fading on and off around the strip in After Effects. Toby then used the VC Optical Flares set to react to the Luminance value on the Object Buffer animation to produce the simple light effect.

In the animation, the camera pans through the scene as the various elements are revealed to show off what’s inside the Slice box. Toby admitted that camera work isn’t his strongest skill but here Cinema 4D made the job relatively easy as he explained: "I used a Camera Morph in conjunction with Target tags to move between the various angles I wanted to catch. That's a great tool, especially for me. The focus distance was set for each camera and then rendered out as a Depth Pass. This was used with Lenscare in After Effects to create the blurred depth-of-field effect."

The project also gave Toby the chance to try out a feature he wasn’t familiar with. He cobbled together an assortment of different Macs to go with his main iMac 3.4GHz i7 unit and used Team Render to network-render the animation. It saved a huge amount of time and worked flawlessly. Even so, after spending 35 hours rendering he noticed that he’d overlooked an intersection in the geometry. Fortunately, he didn’t have to do it all again, explaining, "Luckily I render to PNG sequences so I could just tweak the offending frames and re-render them while still working in After Effects on the final comp."

Toby concluded, "The more I use Cinema 4D the more I realize what a killer bit of software it is."

Duncan Evans is the author of Digital Mayhem: 3D Machines, published by Focal Press. All images courtesy of Toby Pitman.

]]>news-4716Fri, 31 Jul 2015 10:08:00 +0000Virtual Upholstery with Cinema 4D and Octanehttps://maxon.net/en/news/case-studies/advertising-design/article/virtual-upholstery-with-cinema-4d-and-octane/Artist, visualization specialist and trainer Christoph Schindelar uses customized workflows in Cinema 4D to create challenging visualizations of interior furnishings.When a client tasked him with creating visualizations for 360 sofas in 60 different virtual showrooms, Christoph immediately started developing a fitting workflow with Cinema 4D, which would let him deliver the desired results on time and within budget.The basic showroom scenes were created in Cinema 4D and filled with objects obtained from 3D model suppliers. Other elements that weren’t available for purchase were modeled according to reference images using photo modeler.

The focus of the project was the furniture that had to be presented in the showrooms. Christoph used Cinema 4D’s Cloth Simulation feature to cover a standard framework with the respective upholstery. The Cloth Simulation feature works so precisely that the upholstery was automatically fitted correctly, including folds in the cloth. Cinema 4D’s sculpting tools were then used to fine-tune the sofas stitching and other details.

After the furnishings had been modeled, sculpted and textured, and the scene arranged, Christoph began rendering using the Octane render engine. Octane is a GPU renderer that uses a computer’s graphics cards for very fast rendering. Since Octane is an unbiased renderer that renders light and surface properties as accurately as possible, the rendered results were really impressive.

Christoph’s decision to use the Octane Renderer for this project was based not only on the fact that it delivers such stunning results but also on the Live Viewer feature, which lets a scene be rendered dynamically in a special preview window while it’s being edited in the viewport.

The variety of projects with which Christoph is confronted has shown that there is not a universal renderer for all jobs. “Each renderer has its own strengths and weaknesses, when creating automotive renderings, packshots or shots with image-based lighting. For VFX, volumetric effects and interior renderings on the other hand I would recommend the Arnold Renderer. If you take that extra step when using specific applications, render quality can be driven to unprecedented heights. If, for example, Cinema 4D is combined with the HDRI Light Studio plugin and the Octane Renderer you get the best workflow for product renderings, jewelry visualizations and packshots that I know of!” explains Christoph.

Websites that feature Christoph Schindelar’s work:www.artstation.com/artist/chris-3dwww.carbonscatter.com/tutorials/shindelar/index.phpwww.3dvisual.at/]]>news-4571Wed, 29 Apr 2015 09:16:00 +0000Bridging the Gap Between Imagination and 3Dhttps://maxon.net/en/news/case-studies/advertising-design/article/bridging-the-gap-between-imagination-and-3d/Thomas Dubois is actually an architect but also likes to create stories with his friends that he then uses as an inspiration for his illustrations. This is exactly how The Ark was created!The common theme of these stories is planet Earth, whose rising sea levels have transformed the living spaces for its inhabitants. The concept that in such an event living spaces must be used in new and more effective ways was what gave ‘The Ark’ its initial spark. Thomas’ idea of hanging structures on a natural arc structure made of rock was an attempt at placing as many structures for living and working in as small a place as possible. Thomas starts with modeling low-poly models of the rock arc in Cinema 4D, to which he then adds UV coordinates.

He then creates another displacement map in Cinema 4D with noise and distortion properties, and renders the arc using VRay to create an impressive stone structure for the arc. Next, he created the structures that hang like swallows’ nests along the arc, which were also created using Cinema 4D. Cinema 4D’s MoGraph feature was used to duplicate and distribute these objects.“As a whole, ‘The Ark’ is actually not a very complex scene,” says Thomas. “The only issue I encountered was when I rendered the scene. Since the image had to be rendered at a very high resolution, the render times proved to be exorbitant when I did the first tests. Especially the arc’s high-res displacement map played a major role in bloating the render time! This is why I rendered the arc and the structures separately and later composited and fine-tuned both elements in Photoshop.” The result speaks for itself and is an excellent example of how Thomas creates spectacular images of his science fiction visions using Cinema 4D.

Once you’ve seen Thomas Dubois’ work you quickly realize why lectures and symposiums at which he speaks are quickly sold out.Thomas Dubois’ web site:www.thomas-dubois.com/]]>news-4391Fri, 10 Apr 2015 12:02:00 +0000Tripping the Light Fantastichttps://maxon.net/en/news/case-studies/advertising-design/article/tripping-the-light-fantastic/How Jason Bruges Studio used Cinema 4D to control the New Year's Eve lighting display at the top of The ShardBy Steve JarrattTo celebrate the advent of 2015, the developers of The Shard – the tallest building in Europe – wanted to turn the building's glittering spire into a work of art. To accomplish this they turned to Jason Bruges Studio, an award-wining art collective based in London, renowned for creating distinctive interactive installations.

Every evening from Friday 19th December until New Year's Eve, the spire of The Shard would come alive with a light show visible across the city, creating "a dynamic piece of public art designed to reflect and evoke the spirit and energy of London," says Adam Heslop, designer and visualizer at JBS.

The pixelated countdown to 2015 was back-projected through The Shard's apartment windows and timed to coincide with London's famous fireworks display. The celebration lighting comprised of layers of searchlights, sparkling strobes, a dynamic color wash and a huge 2015 numeric graphic.

To achieve the effect, the 'Shard Lights' project occupied the top 40 stories of the building and employed the very latest technologies, including volumetric projection into a mist contained within the spire, and use of the world's first IP65-rated moving head LED lamp. The 850W device, provided by entertainment company SGM, is fully weatherized, making it resistant to water and dust, and its 17,000 lumen rating makes it the brightest of any IP-rated light source. The actual installation was handled by Production Resource Group, which specializes in large-scale theatrical and stadium events.

A project of this scale provided the team at JBS with a number of unique hurdles, the first of which was actually visualizing it. "The main challenge was designing an installation for a skyscraper-sized canvas while sitting at a desk in the studio," explains Heslop. "It's difficult to realistically imagine how effects will look at that scale. Designing a lighting installation for a building made mainly from glass is not without its challenges either – so much transparency means lighting effects won't reflect off the surface and won't be seen. Therefore, designing around this and finding ways to create high-impact effects were a big part of the design process. In addition, we had to ensure that the effects could be seen from the foot of the building and right across the city."

It also didn't help that the team was given just three weeks to get the installation up and running. "Logistically, this was a gargantuan operation," Heslop adds, "getting a substantial amount of heavy lighting and networking equipment to the top of a busy mixed-use skyscraper, plugged in and working across 40 stories, being the main contributing factors."

As Heslop explains, one of the key problems was that it's difficult to assess a complex lighting rig in secret when it's perched on the top of an extremely tall building like The Shard. "In order to get a reasonable idea of how particular effects were going to look on the building, some physical prototyping was necessary," he says. "The most challenging environment for this was the spire of the tower. There was a very limited amount of time to test lots of different lighting effects with a range of different products. The logistics of getting the heavy hardware to the top of a busy skyscraper is just part of that challenge. Knowing this and needing to work in the hours of darkness meant a very small testing window."

So far, so fascinating, but where does Cinema 4D fit into all this? Well, as with many of its installations (such as the Coca-Cola 'Beatbox' which the studio helped create for the 2012 London Olympics), it uses Cinema 4D to assist in visualizing and then operating the various complex mechanisms using XPresso or Python rigs.

Pre-visualization proved a vital aspect of the project in order to provide the client with an idea of what JBS could achieve and how it would look on the day. Once the scope of the project had been determined, the lighting effects had to be designed and accurately simulated since JBS didn't have the time to test every element before it went live. "Cinema 4D's camera calibration tag on photo backplates of the building proved useful," states Heslop. "As potential effects came in and out of the scope, render layers of the effects could be directly composited and layered onto the building visual."

The physical lighting rig used a number of moving head stage lights, offering automated targeting plus a wide range of colors, gobos and various other lighting effects. "This is where I saw the opportunity to use and develop further a Cinema 4D Python plugin that I'd been working on at the studio," says Heslop. "The plugin is a prototype that has the ability to control these moving head light fixtures and all of their features in real-time over a network. It uses Cinema 4D targets and constraints to tell the lights where they should be facing in the real world, while MoGraph matrix arrays were used for driving color and the rest of the features. Making the lights fully compatible with the MoGraph module was great as additional Python Effectors could be written and tiled over the top as in a traditional MoGraph setup."

Heslop's plugin calculates the information needed for every object on the network and sends the data using DMX, a lighting control protocol used in the entertainment industry. As objects are moved in Cinema 4D the lighting fixtures respond accordingly.

"The animations that would eventually be driving the lights were created in a separate Cinema 4D model. This was a simplified setup where the effects could be clearly viewed as a set of MoGraph matrices. The matrices were arranged on a minimal 3D model of The Shard, and the color value of each represented a light source. Controlling the light matrices involved a set of custom Python Effectors, which were designed specifically for this project."

Once the lighting choreography was worked out, the final sequences were exported as a series of low-resolution animations. These were then loaded into an external control system and acted as a pixel map, regulating the brightness and color of the lights. "As the effects were being designed three-dimensionally, a workaround had to be generated for converting MoGraph data into the 2D pixel map. For this a special effector was written to port values from one MoGraph Generator to another. The second Generator was a cloned square plane that, when rendered in an orthogonal viewport, exactly matched up with the pixel-mapped values. This, in addition to a Python helper for changing cameras and render settings, speeded up workflow substantially."

Despite the short deadline and the difficulties in testing a lighting system in secrecy, nearly 1,000 feet in the air, JBS successfully completed the challenge and 2014's New Year's Eve celebration went off without a hitch. "Seeing the searchlights being turned on for the first time and seeing the city sky completely changed was certainly very memorable," declares Heslop.

Steve Jarratt is a long-time CG enthusiast and technology journalist based in the UK.

Jason Bruges Studio Website:www.jasonbruges.com]]>news-4267Fri, 28 Nov 2014 10:22:00 +0000Gtech Vacuum Cleaners Wipe the Floor with Cinema 4Dhttps://maxon.net/en/news/case-studies/advertising-design/article/gtech-vacuum-cleaners-wipe-the-floor-with-cinema-4d/To show off its new Gtech Multi hand-held vacuum cleaner, Grey Technology turned to Bomper Studios for this polished promo videoThe humble vacuum cleaner has undergone something of a renaissance since James Dyson invented the canister vacuum cleaner. Now British inventor Nick Grey has taken the idea a step further with his Gtech range of battery-powered vacuum cleaners that are light, powerful, and can even outperform systems running on electricity.

To help promote its new portable Gtech Multi, Grey Technology approached Bomper Studios based in Caerphilly, Wales, with a brief to produce an info graphic-style animation showing how the device works and highlighting its advantages. The resulting 1080p HD sequence required a mixture of illustrative and photo-realistic rendering, showing the internal workings of the device, as well as its components and attachments.

"The animation had to highlight the benefits of this new vacuum cleaner and compare it to current generic upright cleaners on the market," explains Emlyn Davies, Creative Director at Bomper. "We were also supplied with a full storyboard and script that really helped define each shot and look of the 90-second animation."

The team's first task was to clean up the vacuum model, which Grey Technology supplied as a CAD file in STL format from Autodesk Inventor. Although Cinema 4D can import STL files, Bomper used a dedicated modeling app called Moment of Inspiration – or MoI – from Triple Squid Software Design to gain more control over the export process.

"It was time-consuming," says Emlyn, "as most of the sections had to be imported separately to keep the number of facets in the models high enough to help retain the curvature of the parts."

Fortunately, MoI performed admirably. "The resulting meshes were exported as OBJ files, which required minimum clean up in Cinema 4D. Finally, a few sections were deleted, as they wouldn't be seen in the animation."

With the model prepped, it was then a question of setting up the various animations, revealing the vacuum's different parts and showing it in operation. One of the trickier tasks was representing the concertina-style hose as it cleans a sofa – an effect achieved using hierarchies, XPresso and a Spline Wrap modifier. "We created a spline equal to the overall length of the hose with evenly-spaced points along its length," explains Emlyn. "Then we added several nulls that are pinned on each section of the spline at each point – these control the movement and help us animate the overall hose."

"One end null was placed inside the main body and the other end is placed in the attachment at the other end of the hose. The inner section of the hose is modeled as a low-res polygon object and matches the outer coil, which is created by a helix and circle in a Sweep Object. Beneath the helix and the inner hose geometry is a Spline Wrap modifier that uses the overall spline as a reference and binds both sections of the hose to it."

"The inner hose geometry then has a Cloth object as a parent that smooths out the hose and gives better results compared to the Subdivision Surface object. This means the helix coil doesn't distort along its length when stretched and keeps the coil uniform. Hand animating any jiggle and dynamic effects are simple and no spline dynamics were needed."

The animation was rendered using Chaos Group's V-Ray renderer via the VRAYforC4D bridge between Cinema 4D and V-Ray.

Emlyn notes that one of V-Ray's strengths is that it produces good-looking renders with relatively modest lighting. "We have several setups for the lighting and rendering in this animation," he says. "The white scenes were a simple infinity curve with a floor plane above, lit with several softbox lights. The interior scenes used similar softbox lights to keep the look of the product consistent throughout the animation. There are only four lights in each scene, except for the X-ray scenes, which had no lights and only luminous materials."

"The render times were high for some of the sections," he adds, "which were roughly 25 minutes per frame. We wished that multi-pass was as well supported as in Cinema 4D’s Standard Renderer as it just works so well – luckily the beauty passes we got didn't require much adjustment in post."

The Gtech Multi was still in development during the project so material specification and samples were given to the Bomper team, which they then matched in V-Ray. "The client also wanted to enhance some of the reflectance of the grey materials for the main body to improve the look of the product," says Emlyn.

The ‘X-ray' vacuum cleaner was made from parts of different models from previous projects with some scratch-built sections, and made to represent a generic competitor without actually looking like any specific model. The X-ray effect was achieved with various V-Ray materials consisting of a refraction layer and Fresnel luminosity in the color channel.

To recreate the effect of the X-ray vacuum sucking up debris, Bomper turned to a MoGraph Cloner with a selection of differently colored polygons. At specific locations in the vacuum they then placed planes with Thinking Particles attached using the same polygons as in the Cloner. "Using the TP Suction and TP Follow Spline [presets] the particles get sucked up the attachment and along the hose spline," explains Emlyn. "At the end was a TP destructor and inside the cylinder is a MoGraph object rotating with a number of polygons that grows as the animation runs, faking the build-up of particles."

The sequence of emptying the Gtech into a pedal bin employed a hair object combined with a number of small polygons. Again, a MoGraph Cloner was used to represent small bits of debris, and a Random Modifier was used to affect the scale, position and rotation of the pieces – a result the team was pretty pleased with.

With another project successfully completed, Bomper's creative director has special praise for Cinema 4D, which he declares is "easy to use with spectacular results – the most intuitive software on the market and a joy to use daily."

Emlyn also name checks RebusFarms's render manager – the ‘Farminizer' – which is integrated into Cinema 4D’s interface and was "a dream to use and aided in the rendering workflow and file handling."

With the Gtech Multi animation successfully completed, Gtech UK called upon Bomper to create further animations for other models in the range. As well as the Gtech Multi, Bomper Studio has also visualized the massively popular Gtech AirRam and AirRam K9 Pet vacuum, the animations for which you can see here:

Steve Jarratt is a long-time CG enthusiast and technology journalist based in the UK.

Bomper Studio website:www.bomperstudio.com]]>news-4279Wed, 05 Nov 2014 09:44:00 +0000The Social Networks’ Nethttps://maxon.net/en/news/case-studies/advertising-design/article/the-social-networks-net/Clément Morin uses Cinema 4D to create a film that shows how a tool that connects various social media channels works.Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media channels help us manage contacts all around the world. However, it’s still quite a challenge to bring all of these channels together. This is what Hootsuite wants to do and provide users access to all channels via Hootsuite. To spread the word about this new service, motion artist and animator Clément Morin was given the job of creating a film to show how the system works.

During the time enthusiasm for social media networks was steadily increasing, the television series ‘Game of Thrones’ became one of the most popular series amongst mainstream viewers and the series’ excellent title sequence became known to millions of viewers. The concept that Clément’s client wanted him to realize was a variation of the GoT title sequence in which social media channels appeared as stylized houses on a map. As with the original, the social media houses had to emerge like clockwork mechanisms.

“The biggest challenge was the deadline. The client wanted the film to be presented parallel to the start of the next GoT season. This meant that I had to be finished in 5 weeks, which was when the first Got episode for the following season was to be broadcast,” remembers Clément. “First, I created the stylized map using grayscale height textures. The maps themselves were made up of simple primitives and planes, which were converted to splines using the Vectorizer object and subsequently extruded. The resulting shapes could then be easily animated or otherwise manipulated.”

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About modeling other element, Clément says: “I also used the GoT sequence as a reference for the other models and I worked with very simple geometry. I used the Octane render module for rendering, which uses GPU support for rendering. I was able to work a lot with render instances, which reduced the overall amount of geometry.”

Asked which of the many Cinema 4D features was the most important for this project, Clémens clearly states that it was MoGraph: “Aside from the fact that MoGraph is one of my favorite Cinema 4D tools, it was indispensible for this project when it came to animating the numerous small elements. The Random, Shader and Delay effectors were combined to generate a slight randomness, lag and special shading,” explains Clément.

Summing up, Clément explains that “Without Cinema 4D, 3D graphics would most likely not have become part of my professional repertoire. It would be great if other programs with which I work were so user-friendly, easy to use and easy to adapt to one’s needs as Cinema 4D!”

Clément’s video turned out to be a great boost for Hootsuite and has been viewed over 800,000 times!

]]>news-4300Wed, 29 Oct 2014 10:23:00 +0000A New Look for Bertie Bassetthttps://maxon.net/en/news/case-studies/advertising-design/article/a-new-look-for-bertie-bassett/Bassetts Licorice Allsorts uses Cinema 4D to revamp their mascot - lickety-split!The job of visualizing the new-look Bertie fell to Emlyn Davies, now the Creative Director at Bomper Studio in Caerphilly, South Wales. When he was given the project he was working for Cadbury Design Studio – now Mondelēz International – and the two-person team had just a week to give Bertie a 3D makeover.

The character's individual parts were modeled in Cinema 4D, and then textured using high-resolution photos of the actual sweets. "Some materials were really simple," admits Emlyn, "Just using the high-res images worked really well. Time is a major factor when working with a big studio – they have quick turnarounds, so finding shortcuts is key."

However, some materials did prove problematic. "The best example was the yellow sweets," says Emlyn. "Yellow always seems to be the hardest color to get right we've found, making sure it doesn't look dirty. Lots of time was spent in Photoshop color balancing the textures and adjusting the hues and saturation."

To replicate Bertie's feet and top hat, which are covered in aniseed balls, MoGraph was used to bind small spheres to a hidden cylinder object. This was a tricky balancing act to ensure the balls looked realistic and random. The finished sweet models were then arranged to create Bertie in a ‘T' pose ready for rigging.

Although the brief only required a static image of Bertie for packaging and print ads, the team decided to rig the model, enabling them to quickly create new poses and with the aim of future-proofing the project, should the client request further work.

Cinema 4D's character tools allowed bones to be placed within the model that bind to the mesh and distort it when moved. This helped the artists to quickly manipulate Bertie into his stride pose. "We used the character tools to quickly rig him using the advanced biped setup," remarks Emlyn. "I think it took a day to model and a day to rig. In the end we were separating out sections as the designers wanted to subtly change the pose and overlay objects that weren't possible, like the yellow sweets on the legs."

"The benefit of the rig was having the hand controls quickly set up with minimum fuss," he adds. "Weighting took a lot longer than anticipated as the sweets would intersect each other, so time was taken to make sure we had controls to stretch and squash elements if needed. Elements like the hands had additional controls to allow for bending the fingers, posing his hands and holding objects."

With Bertie rigged and posed it was time to light and render him. "We used area lights with area shadows, as we wanted the best possible results using Global Illumination rendering. We used HDR images within some of the material environment channels to aid with additional highlights on some of the licorice and aniseed sweets. These were then adjusted in post in Photoshop."

The shadows on the final Bertie are very subtle – almost non-existent in places. Emlyn explains how this look was art directed by him and Andy Baker, the packaging designer: "Bertie needed to pop off the dark background as much as possible," he says. "We used subtle shadows adjusted in multi-pass renders."

"The shadow and highlight on the floor don’t match," he continues, "but it works because your eye just doesn't realize it. If we'd tried to utilize a spotlight scene there would be hard shadows projected onto lots of areas and we wanted it to look as clean as possible. We coined the term ‘hyper-realistic', which tends to get used on lots of retouched imagery and CG work, especially in packaging. It's a fine line as you want the image to look as good as possible, but need to make sure that the image is still true to the product."

Bertie was output as 16-bit images and with multi-pass layers to help with color correcting and for the addition or removal of shadows and highlights. Emlyn describes how elements such as the legs, head, body and arms were all rendered out separately, which gave the packaging designer freedom to make subtle positional changes.

"There was a lot of post work," he comments. "It was mainly color correction from RGB to CMYK and making sure they referenced color swatches associated with the brand. The mouth and eyes were added in Photoshop, but apart from that everything is from Cinema 4D from tweaks to highlights, etc., to boost the image."

When asked which part of Cinema 4D proved most useful, Emlyn replies: "Tough one. It's a close thing between the character tools for the hands and MoGraph for the aniseed sweets. Probably the character tools as they're so easy to use and take out a lot of work that's never seen by clients who don't understand the process."

If Emlyn ever gets another chance at re-creating Bertie Bassett, he says that Cinema 4D's sculpting tools would definitely be used for the face and he'd love to give him a facial rig for expressions.

So does he have any suggestions for budding Cinema 4D artists? "The best advice is to use it every day and experiment," says Emlyn. "There are thousands of videos and tutorial sites and extremely helpful forums if you get stuck. I always remember I'd just experiment and try and copy styles or things I'd seen – this is the basis of how I learned to use Cinema 4D as I came from a background in 3ds Max in university. The learning curve for Cinema 4D is very good compared to other software and the interface is just so intuitive."Steve Jarratt is a long-time CG enthusiast and technology journalist based in the UK.

Bomper Studio website:www.bomperstudio.com]]>news-4214Mon, 06 Oct 2014 11:39:00 +0000Cinema 4D Creates 3D Content for Oculus Rifthttps://maxon.net/en/news/case-studies/advertising-design/article/cinema-4d-creates-3d-content-for-oculus-rift/Oculus Rift is one of the most important new innovations for the media sector. Students Nguyen (Kenji) Duong and Felix Droessler are tapping this market and are using Cinema 4D to create interactive content.Infinite Travel is the title of the short film they created using Cinema 4D, in which the motion data of a dance performance is uniquely transformed into an animation. This unorthodox film is not only made special by the unique way in which it uses motion data but also by the way its presented: it was specially created for viewing on Oculus Rift displays. In times full of new innovations, Oculus Rift is preparing the next revolution. The head-mounted display promises to let users dive into interactive 3D worlds. The interactive nature stems from the freedom of movement users have to move their heads in a 3D environment.

As part of their course studies at the Hof university / Campus Münchberg, Kenji and Felix were asked by their professor to create an animation that was based on the Motion Bank project. The Motion Bank project, which was also initiated by Professor Zöllner, is an abstract depiction of digitized choreography, with the aim of producing a new view of movement. Kenji and Felix had to use the score from Motion Bank’s ‘No Time to Fly’ by Deborah Hay – and the resulting motion data – for their project. The team decided to portray the music’s mood in particular in the animation. In addition to the adaption for the Oculus Rift, the animation also had to be set up for stereoscopic rendering. This meant that the viewer would not only experience the freedom of movement that Oculus Rift offers but would also view the animation in 3D.

Converting the Motion Project’s tracking data was done using a plugin that was written specially for this project, which made it possible to transfer this data to objects and particle systems. In addition, XPresso and Thinking Particles were used to convert Motion Project data for the animation, which featured no human performers. With Infinite Travel, the user is taken on a journey while remaining in place. As the animation continues, the journey’s destinations emerge from the environment, which itself is constantly transforming and evolves from a medieval town to a nebulous world and ends in a steppe landscape with blue skies.

At 2 minutes, Kenji’s and Felix’ animation is quite short but considering the fact that the images’ 360° perspective and their stereoscopic set up with a position offset of 8 cm meant that a lot of rendering was involved: the images were not only large but also had to be rendered twice. Precise planning and maximum optimization of objects and materials were required to produce render times that could be realistically achieved with the resources at hand. Rendering was done with VRay. After Effects and special editing tools from the Oculus Rift developer pack were used to complete the film.

Infinite Travel is not only an interesting approach for letting viewers experience motion data in an unorthodox manner but is also an interesting experiment for the creation of new content using the Oculus Rift head mount display.

]]>news-4130Tue, 19 Aug 2014 13:04:00 +0000Bear Printshttps://maxon.net/en/news/case-studies/advertising-design/article/bear-prints/For their latest in-house project, creative agency DBLG turned to 3D printing as way of making their ideas solidEvery now and then, London creative agency DBLG gives it artists free reign to explore new ideas and techniques: "It's a platform to experiment and above all have fun," says the company's founding director, Grant Gilbert.

Fascinated by the concept of 3D printing, the studio embarked on a project to explore the use of a stop-frame animation by physically producing every model in the sequence. "As a rule, everything we do is made and stays in a computer," explains Gilbert. "We were looking for a new studio project and liked the idea of making something physical out of the computer. We've always like the rawness of [Hungarian-born animator] George Pal and wanted to recreate it using modern techniques."

As the project was meant as a proof-of-concept, the decision was made to keep it relatively simple: the animation shows a bear climbing a downwards-moving escalator, effectively making the creature walk on the spot. "We aimed for a two-second, 50-frame animation loop," says Gilbert. "We started with the escalator animation and fitted the bear around it."

36637The tricky part was making the stairs loop, using a Boolean object to cut the Cloner into the right form. For each frame, the stairs were made into a single mesh and tidied up. "We had to make sure each model of the stairs had a clean closed mesh and the normals aligned in order to be properly printed," comments Gilbert.

The job of animating the bear's movement fell to Blue Zoo Productions, a BAFTA award-winning animation studio based in London. You may well have seen the lead character before: the polygonal grizzly starred in the rebrand spots for US TV channel, Animal Planet, seen trying to catch a fish and scratching his back on a tree.

The animated bear was then imported into Cinema 4D, where it was paired with the escalator. Each individual frame was then exported as an OBJ and printed using a Makerbot Replicator 2 – a desktop system currently available for just $2,000. "Each model takes approximately three hours", explains Gilbert, "and we only had one or two printing errors amongst the whole 50. To print the complete set took us nearly four weeks. It's a long time, but we're used to that when we render big files!"

Once all 50 models had been printed, they were then tidied up to remove the excess plastic that supports the bear figure during the printing process. "We had to tweak the mesh here and there, but overall the printer dealt with it very well," says Gilbert. However, the process wasn't without its risks: "We kept the First Aid kit nearby at all times – taking the physical 3D printed bears off of the resin platform was hard work because they stick to the surface. Every time we cut a finger or hurt ourselves, we used to say something like ‘I feel alive'. We're so used to computer animation, doing something tangible for a change was very refreshing."

Successive models were positioned on a small lighting stage and photographed using a Canon EOS 5D SLR connected to a laptop running Dragonframe – a dedicated stop-frame application, used by top studios such as Disney and Aardman. The resulting animation was edited and set to music, and then released to the world. The charming sequence quickly went viral, garnering coverage on loads of tech and creative sites. "It's been incredible PR for us," Gilbert admits. "We've been completely overwhelmed by the response. We've had articles written about the project in Time Magazine, Gizmondo, Wired, Creative Review, The Creators Project and The Verge to name but a few…"

3D printed objects have been used in stop-frame animated shorts for several years, and the Laika movie ParaNorman employed the process to create Norman's varied facial expressions. So while the concept isn't entirely new, DBLG's looping animation is wonderfully hypnotic. "We had no idea that the technique would work as well as it did," comments Gilbert.

The studio had "amazing feedback" from the 3D printing community, though, bizarrely, some animators wanted to know why the studio hadn't just produced the sequence as CG. "That wasn't the point," says Gilbert bluntly. "Anyone can do that, we wanted to get our hands dirty and make something real." He cites the project's physicality as the best part of the process: "People can't help but pick it up and touch it."

DBLG and the crew have been thrilled with the success of Bears on Stairs, and it's certainly given them inspiration for future assignments. Indeed, there's the possibility of an extended version of the animation in the works. "We learnt a lot about improving the models from Cinema 4D to get the best 3D print," says Gilbert. "We're really keen to develop the technique and explore ways of taking the process to the next level."By Steve JarrattSteve Jarratt is a long-time CG enthusiast and technology journalist based in the UK.

]]>news-4040Thu, 10 Jul 2014 10:39:00 +0000Cinema 4D and After Effects: The Perfect Matchhttps://maxon.net/en/news/case-studies/advertising-design/article/cinema-4d-and-after-effects-the-perfect-match/TOKYO DESIGNERS WEEK features an animation created with Cinema 4D and After Effects that perfectly illustrates how the Adobe Cloud works!The TOKYO DESIGNER WEEK is held in Japan and renowned worldwide. In the 28 year since its inception it has grown into an event that showcases architectural and engineering design, product design, graphics and art from around the world. Adobe has been a regular exhibitor for several years and used this year’s event to focus on its Adobe Cloud solution. Among the projects that were showcased were numerous student projects that used the Adobe Cloud for their realization.

Adobe hired the visual design experts at WOW studios to create a film that clearly and concisely shows how the Adobe Cloud can be used. The film that director Shingo Abe and his team created using Cinema 4D and Adobe After Effects utilizes a clear pictorial language to show what can be done using the Adobe Cloud.

Director Shingo Abe says about his work and that of his team: “The response to the film at the trade show was immense. The animation’s distinctive music made visitors stop and take a closer look at what was being offered at the booth and in turn gave them the opportunity to watch the film, which uses an entertaining approach to demonstrate how software and production pipeline work together.”

During the show, Shingo Abe also conducted a motion graphics workshop with After Effects and Flash with the participation of university art students who had experience using Illustrator but had not yet worked with After Effects or Flash. Shingo Abe demonstrated his workflow and showed how to create impressive motion graphics, which gave the students valuable insights for their own projects.

“I try to create films that effect the viewer emotionally. Visuals can convey humor, sadness, suspense and a wealth of other emotions to the audience. A film can be used to influence – or even change – a person’s view of certain things,” says Shingo Abe.

Asked why he uses Cinema 4D for his work, Shingo Abe responded: “I’ve been a Mac user for a very long time and Cinema 4D has always been available for the Mac. This is the primary reason why I work with Cinema 4D. Also, being someone who is not an expert at math or geometry, Cinema 4D’s ease of use and intuitive operation lets me quickly and intuitively bring my ideas to life.”

About WOW:WOW is a visual design studio based in Tokyo, Sendai and London. They are involved in a wide field of design from advertising and commercial works to installation works for exhibition spaces, and also invent new user interface designs for prominent brand names. WOW is also very passionate about creating original art works, holding exhibitions not only in Japan but also internationally. We are continuously discovering the tremendous possibilities of visual design, and the visual designs that are useful for society bring out the best talents of each artist and designer.

2013 Making of Story:www.tv.adobe.com/jp/watch/adobe-students/21168/ TOKYO DESIGNERS WEEK http://www.tdwa.com/]]>news-3950Wed, 11 Jun 2014 08:13:00 +0000Dawn of the 3D Droneshttps://maxon.net/en/news/case-studies/advertising-design/article/dawn-of-the-3d-drones/Dark clouds loom over the closely monitored city. Drum beats defy the complete surveillance and create magical, colorful patterns in the sky.It’s no secret that our world is under surveillance. It’s almost impossible to escape and there’s no single answer to the question, “What can I do about it?”The English artist, motion designer and animator Simon Russell found his own style of protesting the surveillance by drones, intelligence agencies and cameras. He created what he calls a self-initiated experimental 3D animation. Simon explains why he created this film: “When I started working on ‘Dysco’ I wanted to include important topics like the NSA affair, the Arabic Spring in which freedom and dictatorships stood toe-to-toe, and the fact that I live in London, the city with the world’s most comprehensive surveillance system. I wanted to create an experimental film that showcased these topics and dealt with them accordingly. Now that the project is finished I’ve given it a very special definition – but I’m not sure the word can be found in any dictionary.”

Since leaving elementary school, Simon also wanted to create a short film that visualized music. This was also something he wanted to realize with Dysco. Simone used CINEMA 4D, which he has also been using professionally for several years, to create a complex landscape of buildings, sky scrapers and concrete walls crowned with barbed wire – and surveillance cameras everywhere. Different types of drones fly between the buildings and bright red LED lights add to the surveillance robots’ foreboding look and seem to bring them to life.

From the very beginning, Simon used layers in CINEMA 4D to keep the extraordinarily detailed scenes organized. He used the Projection Manager to create the backgrounds for the sky scrapers that appear in the distance. He modeled the objects as cleanly as possible used precisely placed UVs, which made it possible to later bake the textures to further optimize the scene.

The gloomy scenario is eventually broken up by brightly colored abstract shapes that multiply to the rhythm of the music and arrange themselves in geometric structures in time to the beat. This is where the film really becomes experimental and Simon realized most of these scenes using MoGraph and Thinking Particles. “XPresso was also used in many cases to create the numerous procedural effects,” explains Simon.“I wanted to create a film in which music and animation complement each other. This meant that I had to select the right music to achieve a dramaturgical balance for both. Using an existing composition was a problem because this meant that the dramaturgy of the animation would have to be adapted to the music and all dynamic elements would have to be created to match. This is why I decided to compose my own music and let an experienced colleague edit so it sounded more professional.”

Simon had waited 15 years to turn his idea into reality. “I had never had the time nor had I had the skills required to bring my thoughts to film. Now that I’ve used CINEMA 4D for several years and have had the opportunity to drastically improve my skills, creating a highly complex project like Dysco was quite easy to do,” explains Simon. The film was quickly named “Staff Pick” at Vimeo – a well-deserved distinction!

Simon Russell’s Website:www.simonfarussell.com]]>news-3949Mon, 19 May 2014 13:38:00 +0000Right About Nowhttps://maxon.net/en/news/case-studies/advertising-design/article/right-about-now/Headlining the Coachella 2014 festival, Fatboy Slim mixed electronic dance music with hi-res CG visuals for the ultimate live show performanceTim had already set up Plastic Reality and Plastic Pictures and the content for this year's Coachella was to be provided by his new venture, The Happiness Labs - a studio focusing on the integration of shared experience through the latest crop of tech devices such as Leap Motion, Myo from Thalmic Labs and of course the mighty Occulus Rift. So, whether creating content for music events, experiential content for brands or looking at new ways of storytelling, Tim intends to be at the convergence of the new wave of tech and tools and the never-ending desire for a good story.

This year's team that’s working on the show for Coachella included Chris Cousins, Joe Plant and Bob Jaroc. Bob was out on the tour while Chris and Joe were crunching out some stunning frames. For this year's production they also shot lots of footage in slow motion and had Mike Sansom from the Brightfire Pyrotechnics company help blow stuff up - not using particles or expressions but black powder.

The content was created using four workstations with 16 CPUs for rendering the footage, with CINEMA 4D and After Effects driving the entire process. The Coachella staff built a set with the DJ booth integrated into a 96 square meter screen and the VJ would run the entire show using video being sent live from Fatboy's Serato setup, with Resolume running from the VJ position off-stage.

Tim explained how the key concepts came about: "Coachella originally approached Team Fatboy asking if we would like to do a show based on the four seasons. The set at Coachella is 60 minutes long so they were looking to split it into four parts and use a bunch of physical effects - fire, snow, rain - to accentuate the different seasons. We had a think about this and obviously loved the idea of the different physical effects but thought the four seasons might be a bit like doing opera. We started throwing some ideas around and realized we could re-work Fatboy's ‘Eat Sleep Rave Repeat' track into ‘Heat, Sleet, Rain, Repeat!' We got to keep the physical effects but had to incorporate them into Norm's global smash. Norman was placed in the middle of the screen with the display split into nine regions. This meant that we were able to build some additional content around this configuration, such as the fruit machine animation"

The fruit machine section was built by Chris Cousins, who commented on the value of "The quick and smooth motion blur, using MAXON's physical renderer, which helps avoid the strobe effect - especially important with large-scale displays. Also, the simple parametric setup via MoGraph cloners, which meant it was easy to create new combinations, swap out text, and animate bounce using simple sliders."

A big part of the show utilizes a 3D version of Fatboy Slim’s head built entirely in 3D, which you can see here…

They scanned Norman Cook with the guys at Centroid at Pinewood studios and then added the textures and finishing touches in After Effects. This leads to the boom box video:

Where the four seasons effects were created to run along with the tune. It starts with paint splashes, which were created in Realflow. Joe Plant, who built the boom box footage, went through the process. "The trick to the consistency of paint in Realflow was a subtle blend of viscosity, density and surface tension. The transition of the paint was down to a high output rate, which passed through three separate vortex daemons. The surface of the boom box was then given a high stickiness value to make the paint stick, which in turn, with a modified gravity setting, produced the desired results."

The next stage of the video was fire, which was created in Phoenix FD. Once the required elements of the boom box were separated and incorporated into the simulation, a high fuel temperature combined with a high cooling rate and varying output to create the fire pulses, provided the desired results.

About 60% of the video elements were scripted and were launched within Serato, which has been Fatboy Slim's DJ weapon of choice since it incorporated video about six years ago. The files sat as QuickTime video within Serato and, when a pre-scripted track was selected, the video and audio worked in perfect synchronicity. If the pitch was changed, the video sped up or slowed down accordingly. The other elements, such as the rain and snow effects, were all operated by the VJ, Bob Jaroc. Tim added, "We had a script we had worked on with Norman but a lot of it was triggered manually and not on rails. Norm always likes to throw lots of curveballs into a show so we have evolved with that spirit in mind over the years - always be ready for the unexpected!"

At the heart of the process, though, was the CINEMA 4D and After Effects pipeline. Tim concluded, "Their widespread adoption throughout the creative industries is a reflection of the quality of results that can be achieved. And we find for speed and flexibility, they are the ultimate combination. The forthcoming era of deeper integration between CINEMA 4D and After Effects is really exciting, and we are really looking forward to see how this will enhance our workflow. We find them a joy to play with and encourage all younger artists who are working with us to learn this combination."

]]>news-3514Mon, 18 Nov 2013 08:29:00 +0000The Spirit of the Machinehttps://maxon.net/en/news/case-studies/advertising-design/article/the-spirit-of-the-machine/The confrontation of constant exhibition online on the one hand and the need for privacy on the other was the motivation for artist Mike Winkelmann, a.k.a. Beeple, to create a short film on this subject, which he realized using MAXON CINEMA 4D.Beeple is an extremely calm artist who creates a work of art every day, regardless of how small it is. He also works on larger projects that take longer to create and works as a web designer, all the while keeping a good eye on the world around him. He keenly observes what’s going on around him and articulates this in his works of art.

His latest work was obviously influenced by concern and contemplation, which Beeple successfully articulated using his unique style. He made a short film titled “Transparent Machines”, which deals with the problematic discrepancies between the extroverted exhibitionism taking place online and in social networks on the one hand and the constant admonishments for the protection of privacy online on the other. Beeple’s statement is clear: we are all transparent machines!

The short film shows an unbelievably complex arrangement of machine parts that unfold, open, interlink, move themselves, bolt together and more: in short, they interact in any way imaginable. The mechanical movements create a wave over the machines. The camera follows the movement and reveals in increasing number of glass parts.

“The greatest challenge was to create such a complex object with so many moving parts that were also rigged and animated. The object was also developed ‘on-the-fly’,” said Beeple. “Since each part of the machine was an individual moving part, there was no way to automate the movements. It was a very time-consuming process.”

Before starting this project, Beeple did not have any experience with a linear workflow. This was the first time that Beeple rendered an animation with single images in 4k resolution, which he then imported into After Effects to create the animation. Here, he created a camera movement to make the animation look unsettled – like it would look if a hand-held camera had been used. He was very accurate in the creation of the glass material and used Subsurface Scattering and volumetric fog in the Refraction channel.

When the animation was rendered using V-Ray, Beeple decided to use a very simple setup. “No lights, no GI, no sky, no Ambient Occlusion, not even the omission of depth of field resulted in acceptable render times,” remembers Beeple. “The whole glass look was actually a mistake – I wanted an entirely different look. But when I saw the entire machine in the glass look it went ‘bang’ in my mind and the entire concept was changed,” laughs Beeple. “During production, I sometimes doubted that I could finish the project. The huge scene with the innumerable number of assets and thousands of keyframes in the Timeline! But once again, CINEMA 4D lived up to its reputation. The clear interface, which offers quick feedback regardless of the number of objects, let me locate items I wanted to work on anywhere in that mountain of elements in the scene so I could fine-tune and accentuate them exactly the way I wanted to!”

Mike Winkelmann’s web site:beeple-crap.com]]>news-3482Thu, 10 Oct 2013 08:20:00 +0000Ornamental Organ Decoration Created with CINEMA 4Dhttps://maxon.net/en/news/case-studies/advertising-design/article/ornamental-organ-decoration-created-with-cinema-4d/Wood – the epitome of organic materials – is not the easiest material to bring into shape. But new paths were forged using the right tools and CINEMA 4D.When the firm of Orgel Mayer was given the job of building a new organ for the philharmonic in Penza, Russia, they wanted to use new methods for creating various elements of the organ’s decoration. The organ was designed and built using traditional methods but the decorations were first modeled in 3D and milled out of wood using advanced milling machines. German-based 3D Holzdesign, who has numerous years experience in this field, was commissioned to create the decorative wood elements. 3D Holzdesign specializes in creating wooden elements that are otherwise not feasible to produce. 3D Holzdesign’s Andreas Weinzierl worked several years to develop a method of milling based on virtual 3D models. Andreas is able to use virtual templates to mill wooden objects, which is exactly what Orgel Mayer needed for its project.

So much for the technical side, all that was needed next were the virtual designs. In the past, this would be done by a wood sculptor who would work from sketches that he would painstakingly carve out of wood. The ornamental design was created by the team at Wiesbaden, Germany-based Augenpulver studios that specializes in 3D design. Paul Kramer and his team created the designs based on a scale CAD model of the organ. “The CAD model of the organ was easily imported into CINEMA 4D,” Paul recalls, “after which we created basic models for the areas in question, which were then sculpted using CINEMA 4D’s sculpting tools.”

3D Holzdesign took the models created by Augenpulver to mill the shapes out of special blocks of wood using their proprietary connection with the CNC milling machine. The wood was ‘special’ because it was old and had been stored and dried over a long period of time to ensure that its shape would remain constant, i.e., no shrinkage or distortion. The largest of these blocks of wood was valued at more than €15,000. The finished designs could only be fitted on the finished organ, which was already standing in Penza, Russia – which meant that there was absolutely no room for error! This was made even more of a challenge considering the fact that the milling machine’s limitations and characteristics had to be taken into consideration. The diameter of the milling machine’s bit predetermined the size of the smallest possible notch or recess. Each tendril had to have its own guide spline within the model along which the milling machine could orient itself. The radian measure also had to be considered, which defines the milling machine’s movability and angular position.

“In the end we were all fascinated by the milled parts! Having virtual models on the monitor is different from holding the finished pieces in your hands. A fascinating experience that was overshadowed by the fact that we didn’t know if everything would fit as planned. But we were very elated when the call from Russia came and we were told that everything fit perfectly!”, remembers Paul Kramer. “But then, CINEMA 4D was the perfect tool for the job: Real units of measure, really good import tools, sculpting tools, and the Object Manager gave us an excellent overview of Generators and Deformers, which made it possible to quickly achieve the results we wanted,” concludes Paul and adds: “The team at Augenpulver looks forward to more projects of this type.”

Website Orgelbau Mayer:www.orgelbau-mayer.de]]>news-3074Thu, 14 Feb 2013 12:21:00 +0000KIA’s Colossal Cataloghttps://maxon.net/en/news/case-studies/advertising-design/article/kias-colossal-catalog/Challenging project for KIA Motors mastered by design studio Moss &amp; Dew using MAXON Cinema 4D.In the past, traditional photography was used to create exterior and interior shots of various KIA models but for the new KIA Quoris, exterior shots were created entirely as CGI. Mr Soonyup Song, head of the 3D communication team at Seoul, Korea-based Moss & Dew and expert for 3D content and planning, saw this challenge as an opportunity.

The existing photo catalog was made up of images created using traditional photography, and this project demanded that images of the new Quoris be created as CG – with the same consistent look and within a tight project schedule. Modifications during the course of project completion were also probable.

The introduction of a new car model and its marketing orchestration down to the last detai is an elaborate and costly process for any manufacturer and is designed to ensure maximum impact. Photos of upcoming models shot in secret undermine the effectiveness of these marketing measures. The fact that the new KIA Quoris only existed as a virtual 3D model made it impossible to photograph. In addition to the cost-saving factor and the enhanced creative freedom, the increased security for KIA's intellectual property rights was a key factor in the decision to use 3D renderings.

“We had to create photo-realistic, high-res images at a resolution of 60 cm x 40 cm, which meant that we had to pay very close attention to even the smallest details with regard to materials and lighting in order to achieve the desired look within the tight deadline,” Mr. Song recalls. “Because all images were being created for print, almost all models had to be high-res, which resulted in scenes with 30 million to 50 million polygons each. On top of this, many optional vehicle parts and colors had to be taken into consideration and the background had to be very appealing. We had to define a workflow that could handle large amounts of data effectively and also quickly generate previews so we could fine-tune the scene settings.”

Mr. Song decided to use his software of choice, MAXON Cinema 4D, to meet this challenge. Mr. Song has relied on Cinema 4D for several years now as a primary tool for 3D content creation. Both low-poly as well as high-poly models were created for each model. The low-poly model was used while setting up and lighting the scene and then replaced with the high-poly model for rendering.

“This project would have been impossible to complete within the allotted time without Cinema 4D’s XRef function,” says Mr. Song. “In the course of this project, numerous parts were assembled and modified based on original parts, and design changes were also made every now and then. We saved all parts in a single archive and replaced them with XRefs as needed, which made it possible to create a very effective workflow. When a design was modified we didn’t have to manually update each scene – all we had to do was modify the archived object and every scene was updated automatically! XRefs made it possible to dramatically speed up the project’s workflow and increase it’s efficiency,” explains Mr. Song.

Artist Jinill Kim also modeled the background in Cinema 4D to achieve the best match for the Quoris. The imagery for the new KIA Quoris – from modeling to rendering - was created entirely in MAXON Cinema 4D.

“Our client, KIA Motors, was very happy with the result and was very impressed by the power of Cinema 4D. We are proud of the fact that we successfully met this challenge, and a large part of the credit for this achievement goes to Cinema 4D,” states Mr. Song.

Cinema 4D’s basic renderer was used to supply quick feedback during the project’s creation. Final rendering was done using Cinema 4D’s fast and reliable Advanced Render feature.

Mill editor and longtime skater Ryan McKenna poured over skateboarding, snowboarding and surfing videos for inspiration while working alongside creative director Mario Stipinovich, design director Jeff Stevens and art director Emmett Dzieza on the spot. The result is a stylized world that artfully combines illustration, cubist geometry and motion with the help of MAXON’s CINEMA 4D, Autodesk’s Maya, After Effects and a bit of Houdini and XSI.

The Pantech phone’s shape steered the creative team toward designing around board sports related to the tour since it “would have been a hard sell to make it behave like a BMX bike,” Stipinovich says, laughing. After doing some research on various types of moves, the team presented a reference board of some angles from surfing and skateboard photography that they thought were particularly cinematic.

Once the board was approved they moved on to creating a more linear storyboard and a live-action edit that helped with workflow. Working in the same room for the duration of the project enabled The Mill’s core team to collaborate while still sticking to their tight deadline—just three weeks from pitch to finished 30-second spot. “We had an editor, a 3D artist working on previs, and Emmett and Jeff were building the skeleton of the thing,” says Stipinovich. All told, 26 artists worked on the spot.

Real-life moves became real tricks for the crossover phone in the hands of 3D animators Ross Scroble and Sam Crees, making it possible to lock an edit in the first week of production. “Ryan’s edit gave us the cut points and transitions, and he was able to sort from existing footage for about 75 percent of this thing,” Stipinovich says.

Next, the design team went to work creating three different environments for the skateboarding, skiing and surfing portions of the spot. Each colorful, abstract world was designed to flow easily into the next and the look was inspired in part by cubist paintings. It was freelance illustrator and designer Bryan Louie’s job to turn those modernist visions into illustrated environments the 3D artists could build off of.

Once the animation and look were finalized, the design team used CINEMA 4D to make the environments come alive. “It was great and it allowed us to projection map the illustrations onto the geometry we built,” Dzieza explains. “It was a seamless workflow because we were able to map illustrations onto the geometry so easily with CINEMA 4D’s Projection Man.”

This project was one of the first big jobs for which The Mill NY has used CINEMA 4D. “And it really expanded our capabilities with CINEMA 4D a lot,” says Stipinovich, adding that projection mapping was used most often but for some scenes they did unwrap the UV’s so they could work with BodyPaint 3D.

Artists used CINEMA 4D’s Dynamics to get the icicles hanging from the railing in that scene to drop and fall to the ground. They created snow shaders and crystal rock shaders that came in handy for the skiing scene and CINEMA 4D’s Sketch and Toon helped them add a dynamic, graphic look. The Pantech phone was created with Maya and XSI.

Creating the wave for the surf scene turned out to be the most challenging thing to pull off, Dzieza says. “The smallest inconsistency with one of these particle animations and it just looks wrong, so it was a pretty big bite to take off for such a short amount of time and I think every artist on the project touched that scene.”